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anything to indicate that I had any matrimonial intentions but I was very fond of Doris and I wanted to give her something extra special to indicate this. I had heard of "sister pins" and I thought that a sister pin would be just the right thing and would show that she was the pal of a Phi, someone whom that Phi thought a great deal of. So I bought a lovely little sister pin and I think I gave it to Doris for the Christmas of 1923. When I presented it to her, she acted shocked and then I thought she was going to cry, and finally she got hold of herself and thanked me and tried to act pleased but I knew I'd made serious mistake; sister pins were for girls who were sisters and toward whom you had brotherly feelings only. When I decided to give the pin to Doris, I didn't realize this was the connotation, but regardless of my good intentions, I hurt her very deeply. Nevertheless, this incident brought no visible change in our relationship and we kept on doing the same things together right on up to my graduation. But I'd come to the conclusion that I didn't love Doris in the sense that I wanted to ask her to marry me although I searched my soul very thoroughly before coming to this conclusion -- something was missing. My 1924 diary covers in a good deal of harrowing detail what I went through in arriving at this conclusion and proves that I didn't take the matter lightly. But it was the conclusion and while Doris went to Shoals that summer, nothing developed there to rekindle the whole thing and when I parted from Doris in Boston en route back from Shoals, I didn't realize it but I was never to see her again. I went to Schenectady and while I would return to Syracuse occasionally on weekends to see Mother, I never saw Doris. However, Mother and Doris kept in touch until Doris graduated and Doris finally told Mother how she felt about me.

There is an epilogue to this story also. In 1930, I co-authored an AIEE paper on three-power locomotives and presented it at the annual meeting that winter and it was subsequently printed in the AIEE journal. Not long after this, I received a letter from Doris addressed to me at the GE plant in Erie, the only address she knew, and which she'd gotten from the AIEE paper. She wrote that she was married very happily and was living in New York. I gathered that her husband was a doctor and she told me that she'd been working in the library of the headquarters of AT&T in New York and had just happened to see my paper in the AIEE Journal and how very "Forielike" it sounded and she'd decided to write me. Particularly she wanted to tell me that while our break-up had been a heavy blow to her, she realized she'd been very young and she was now reconciled to its having been a mere episod of her "callow" youth, that she and "Doc" were very happy and self-sufficient, and she hoped that some day we could get together and talk about the old days -- also that she was sure that Willie and I were equally happy. It was a sweet letter and I answered it and we exchanged two or three letters at distant intervals and I felt much better about the whole thing. I

Transcription Notes:
"episode" not "episod."