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what good does it do to those who live it or to anyone else? I feel sure that had I a million, still I wouldn't give a rap for a social career here or anywhere else. The society of interesting and congenial people is what counts and not whether they belong to the local smart set. If they are interesting and congenial and worthwhile, and do at the same time belong to a society-loving crowd, all well. I love to go to a good dance occasionally. I enjoyed the one on Wednesday immensely but the real social whirl appeals not. It does seem so empty; I think it [[underlined]] is [[/underlined]] utterly empty. Instead of that life, how much fuller and better is a life filled with real values such as intimacy with good literature, music, art and nature, and people of interest. How much better to fill one's hours with these things, developing one in every way toward a manhood and womanhood that may someday be of real value to the world, than waste time and opportunity in a ceaseless pursuit of never-satisfying pleasure. How glorious rather to catch the great spirit of life, the realization of the romance of it all, and sing in jubilation at being alive. Read this of Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side
All through the dragging day -- sharp underfoot
And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs --
But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,
And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,
The world is mine; blue hill, still silver lake,
Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road,
A gateless garden, and an open path,
My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.

And in me I find something stirring, a desire to be more than a great engineer. It is inevitable, I suppose, that within me should be a yearning to also be a person of culture, to write, to paint and draw. I think my nature must be somewhat similar to that of Hopkinson Smith, for I should love a career like his, remarkable, versatile, one in a million. It is a lofty goal but I am beginning to feel like aiming at anything. Why not? Others have and won. Why not I? At any rate, it will develop me immensely to aim at something very high. But above all things, I want to be a man. That is the ultimate goal of Life for it embraces everything worthwhile.

Regarding interesting people, I find John Southworth falls into that class. I really believe that some day Johnnie will make himself known outside the circle of his acquaintances. He has already begun to, having written some sort of a history which his father published and which has been adopted by the states of Pennsylvania and Texas and the cities of New York and Chicago. I saw one of Johnnie's poems in the Harvard Review and it appealed to me as being something more than ordinary. Johnnie writes and plays and is evidently enjoying life immensely. He