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of the word, a drunken brawl. It was highly respectable. I saw only one man who was even noticeably under the influence and he wasn't bad. There were some might nice girls there also a fine crowd of fellows. It was the only dance last night, so was a sort of open house affair, there being many outsiders there. Mike introduced me to a number of girls and I did have a sort of third interest in his and Bartlett's. She was "Cooky" Farrell from Skidmore at Saratoga -- very pretty, pleasant and a good dancer. But the prize girl of the whole evening, as far as I was concerned, was a Miss Viola Lynch, a sister of Bernie Lynch, who is down at the works. When she told me she was his sister, I said, "Oh, well, then you must be from the south." And she replied, "Yes, ah'm from Nyew [[underline]] Awle [[/underline]] ans." She was only eighteen and up here with her mother and aunt visiting her "bruthah" for a few days. She was very attractive and I loved to hear her talk. I told her I had a girl from Kentucky and I loved to hear her talk. A little while later she said, "Ah'm talkin' a lot so you'll think about that girl from Kentucky." There's no getting around the fact that the southern girls are wonderfully attractive -- they do have a charm about them that seems to be distinctive. She is staying at the Van Curler and I was almost inclined to try to make a date before she leaves Wednesday but decided it would be rather foolish under the circumstances.

[[underline]] To Willie, October 5, 1925: [[/underline]] Your bridge sounds terribly discouraging. I was nearly roped into a session of it last night by Del Quammen but finally decided to stay in and finish up my proposition for Ingersoll Rand. I did and so today I got out my "MC's" on the four motors I designed. An "MC" is a sheet giving all the data essential for the cost department to have in order to place a price on the machine. To give you some notion of the routine here, the stenographer has to make [[underline]] nine [[/underline]] copies of the MC. Three of them stay here -- one for us for filing, one for the Supervisor of Costs at Schenectady, and one for the commercial engineer who handles the correspondence with the customer. Six go to Erie where the motor would be built -- one to the chief designing engineer there and five to the Supervisor of Costs, as the cost is estimated at Erie and then sent back here to the various interested parties. And mind you, all this is done in order to make a "proposition" to the customer. As yet it is not even an order. The routine attending the passage of an order, and what attends it, through the factory, is far more complex. I told Frank on the way up tonight that I had just finished my first proposition, to which he remarked That he supposed now I was praying they wouldn't sell the machine, the implication being that if the motors were ever built they would doubtless go up in smoke when the switch was thrown in. ...... Read another conversation which took place at Schumacher's tonight, this being between Francois and Mary, the waitress: