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11

down on the river bank watching the sunset and just as the sun reached the rim of the hills, I thought to myself, "Willie is off in that direction somewhere and for her, the good old sun is about twenty degrees above the horizon, or still up in the sky quite a bit, while for me, it is just disappearing. Then I was reminded of Einstein's famous axiom that all things are relative and depend upon the conditions of observation. ...... I loved your description o the moonlight night from the hill in Iroquois Park. I could almost see that scene as you described it. "The moon shines brightest in Kentucky" -- that does sound so much like the South. Doesn't it lose all its charm when you say, "The moon shines brightest in New York?" The South certainly has that invisible, intangible something that makes it so different. ...... Friday morning I proceeded to allow a piece of copper I was grinding on an emery wheel to slip out of my hand and in the process of slipping out, it took a neat little piece out of my finger. Away to the hospital again!
[[underlined]] To Willie, September 2, 1924: [[/underlined]] I came back to Schenectady yesterday afternoon on the "Empire" although I had to ride to Albany and then retrace my steps to Schenectady on a local. You see, the "Empire" doesn't deign to stop at a city with a paltry 100,000 population. We were breezing along ten or fifteen miles outside of Syracuse and I thought we weren't going fast enough so I pulled out my watch to time a mile or so. The first mile I noted, we clipped off in the rather brief space of forty-eight seconds. I was satisfied -- we were going fast enough. But down near Herkimer, I decided to time another mile. This time it was forty-five seconds --[[underlined]]eighty[[/underlined]] miles per hour. I get as big a thrill on that train as I do on a roller coaster. A railroad wreck must be an awful thing. I couldn't help wondering where we ever would land if we should jump the track at 80 per. All that energy of 1,000 tons at 117 feet per second would have to be dissipated someway and mighty rapidly at that. ...... This afternoon at quitting time it was raining, so we spent a half hour walking around Bldg.60, where all the big turbines are. We climbed up on a scaffolding to survey one huge machine and I fairly gasped at the size of it. It was for the Detroit Edison and about this proportion (no kidding).
[[image- text reads "(no kidding)" with a hand drawn diagram of an electric generator, steam turbine, and a male figure drawn to approximate scale, and labeled]]
Now that it is drawn, it actually isn't quite large enough. I have never seen such immense machines. It certainly gives one a big kick to feel that one is working for such a concern -- that one is part of such a great enterprise.