Thursday P.M.Peg dear,
Miss Canny [?], dressmaker, offers to fix the sleeves for 50¢, so I'm keeping the dress. It will do for a number of things, as thee knows and has so kindly provided it for me. It will pack & travel nicely. K says it is just the thing to wear in a hotel to dinner next summer - after a day of travel.
English Class
FridayI had classes from 8:45 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. yesterday, and this never finished. After dinner K & I played bridge with Buck and Freddy in their house. I got very hungry and rudely called for food about 9:30. "Well, I was just going for it anyway" says Buck placidly. And presently I got olive-spread sandwich, ginger ale & hot fudge sundae from Glessies.
K is the young [woman] in whose company I am going abroad. Her father is a minister - but of a big church in Newark, and the family ships abroad every time they have a bit of money. Her father and mother could be our chaperones - but they will not go everywhere we do, and we will not go everywhere they go. They say comfortably that we are old enough to do for ourselves (do not communicate this to mother) and that travel on the Continent is very easy. "Ditemi come potiamo andare a San Pietro" is please tell me how to go to Saint Peters - the Italian shoe-man here is teaching me some useful phrases for Italy.
Peg - I do want to go to another country & and [sic] old one where their [sic] are layers of different civilizations & culture - where the peoples grow out of an old deep soil. I read books by English men, French writers, Norwegian Italian & Spanish, German & Polish. And I do want to see some of these things. I can come back having seen all I could - and there will be more of me there to work my own stories from, if I can write any.
K & I are going to settle and sit on the Devonshire coast - and realize as much of country England as we can in a week. In France we are going down unto Brittany - away from the city - and get what we can from a week in the quiet there. I am going to speak my slow awkward French as much as possible.
I am going to turn myself unto a capacious receptacle & take in everything I can. - I am going to hear Paderowski tonight in Springfield - if I think I have enough money.
El is in the infirmary with a cold. I am too busy to take my cold there. I have been leading the recessional Seniors out of chapel these mornings (in El's place) and I am getting great control of my features. The face must be impassive during this march.
I can hardly wait to get my dress back from Miss Canny.
Give my love to all Salterthwaites.
With much love,
[On a separate sheet, with a ticket stub to a Dec 19, 1925 event]
Well - you ought to see the tremendous letter I got from Brownie.* He is impressed by me, & - well you should see the letter.
Bet I get a bid to carnival.
* = big Dartmouth man