30 Lenox Drive,
Greenwich, Conn.
April 9th, 1928Lady dear,
It seems years since I've heard from you or seen you. I came up here for our short holiday from Good Friday to the following Tues. Father has been here with Augustus since the 1st of Jan. & will remain till about the first of May when the Sherborn house gets warm enough for him to go back there. He is a pathetic picture. He eats & sleeps well, but is so frail mentally & physically. Bent, tremulous, suspicious, he fumbles with his papers, opening & reading letters again & again without grasping their meaning. He does not miss his children when they are not with him. He is like a building whose interior has been swept by fire leaving the outside blackened & tattering.
How are you, & how goes the world of work & play? I hope the atmosphere is clearing. I hear Miss Moody is going abroad again this summer with a cousin I think. You are planning to go too, aren't you?
I was invited to speak at the Pan-Pacific summer conference at Honolulu in August, but declined. It seemed a long trip, for I cannot relax or enjoy myself when I have to speak. I have no plans for the summer. I shall stay in Balto. thro' August anyway going up to our Bungalow in the Blue Ridge Mts. for weekends, or up to Sherborn for a day or two at a time. Dr. Meyer goes abroad in June as usual, I believe. Many changes are taking place at the Clinic. This year I have an assistant. He is a German Jew who is so jealous of me that things are unpleasant. Dr. Meyer tried him as Resident for 2 yrs. & couldn't stand him, & asked me if I would see if I could train him. The dear old chief hates to believe that anybody is "unmodifiable human material." Our house staff is almost entirely foreign - 2 Scotchmen, 1 Canadian, a Chinaman, a Dane, a German, 2 Swiss. This year I have charge of the public wards, & my staff rounds twice a week are trying. It's all very well to train these foreign people, but they go back to their own countries & leave us high & dry with the same thing to do all over again with a new batch. They cannot teach because they are having & have a language difficulty. But Dr. Meyer & I carry the burden of the teaching that increases all the time. I get fearfully discouraged at times, & long for a breathing space. This full time stuff is not what we thought it would be. I am loaded with consultations as much as ever. Every hour when I'm not teaching or giving ward rounds is dated up 2 weeks in advance with patients from all parts of the country. This spring I have 60 hrs. in the Sch. of Hygiene instead of 20 as heretofore. It's too much. Yet they called for it, & there is nobody else on our staff. available.
Please excuse this wail. Burning my own smoke is something I'll never learn to do.
Here's a great deal of love for you
from
Esther