[Several paragraph marks added for ease of reading]Strasbourg, Aug. 11, 1925.
My dear Miss Turner,
Such a nice letter from you dated July 4, 1924! I have just re-read it. I have carried it around with me for a year or more always intending to write you and always putting your letter aside with a few others to wait for some more leisurely period. Why leisurely I cannot say because this last year has been all leisure - and I have enjoyed it in a way I did not think possible. Dr. Sherwood and I have now definitely turned our faces homeward. When we turned westward from Zürich a week ago we knew our year of play in Europe was over, just as when Dr. Sherwood and I did the same thing thirty-five years ago - turned our backs on Zürich in the month of August - we knew we were turning our backs on a period which, while it had been one of hard work, had been one of great freedom and opportunity. Then, however, we were facing an unknown future, now we look back over what that future brought to us, and whatever else it did to us, it brought us friendships which we value, among them I always count on yours.
We have had an interesting year beginning in Norway last July with the international conference of University women. We met old friends there and made new acquaintances who have been turning up in most unexpected places. A few days ago in Basel we went to the museum on Sunday morning to look at the paintings of Böcklen and Holbein of which they have a goodly number. While we were looking two young women came up and asked whether we had not been to Christiania to the conference last summer. They were two sisters young women whose home was Basel. The older one, about thirty, had been the leading delegate from Switzerland. They promptly asked us to come to tea in the afternoon, an invitation which we promptly accepted. The older one is qualified as a lawyer the first woman lawyer in Basel, and is about to open an office there. Her sister is a student of theology! Very few such in Switzerland in spite of the freedom to study that their Universities have grated women lo, these many years. -
We have had a good time without doing anything useful. We went from Norway to Scotland to London to Paris to the French Riviera, to Rome. Naples. Sicily - Naples - Florence - the Italian lakes - Switzerland and are now back in France, to see what the Germans did in a French city which they had taken "for keeps." It is interesting here to see the names of the streets changed from German to French. It was here that Pasteur had his first - I think - appointment as professor and it is satisfactory to find an "Avenue Pasteur" and a "Rue do Bon Pasteur." When we have to associate with Germans we think their manners are insufferable, but when we get away among the French we think they are worse. Except the French Riviera and Sicily I had been to the various places we have visited - mostly - before but I had always found it necessary to be in these places out of season and it was a great comfort to have an opportunity of staying longer and under better conditions of climate than I had ever done before. -
I feel young! active and vigorous - as well able to do a day's work as ever, but now I shall have to hunt occupation. Next winter we shall spend in Baltimore as Dr. Sherwood continues her work at Bryn Mawr School - but we are now on the look out for a permanent home where we can live in comfort all the year round so it is not likely to be in Baltimore. However, to find a place and get it in order is the next job - In the meantime I have a piece of work in mind which will occupy me for a year - I shall want to write you about it if I get started on it as I hope. - Some day I want to ask you what you know about Miss Honeywell who was with us for a year. I wonder if an injustice was not done her while she was in Baltimore.
Dr. Sherwood joins me in friendly greetings.
Heartily (quoted from Page's letters - I like it) Yours,
Lilian Welsh.