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Erie, Pa.,
Sunday, March 7, 1926.

Again comes the urge to write down my thoughts about life, what it means, or should mean. I seem to have lost my rudder again, and although at times I find it a glorious thing to live, yet I cannot ever be sure of myself, feel a firm grip on things. I think this journal helps give me that grip. I want to continue it again. Great questions puzzle me again. Why? Why? Why all this? What is it I want to write this morning? I think it is my conception of what my life should be. I see Life as a glorious advanture at its best. I should like always to be aware of the very glory of that adventure, always thrilling to it, always seeing what is best in it. I should like to go through Life appreciating its many, many sides, its people, its scenes, its story, its beauty, ah, thrilling through and through to its endless panorama, this great parade. I should like to be conducting my own life so well that never would I be troubled by a guilty conscience. It is only when free from regrets, when in full consciousness of having done right and well in all phases of one's activities, that Life presents its fully glory. I should like to cultivate my tastes for all that is beautiful. I should like to write and draw and read, and talk, and understand, and be great in my profession -- full, rounded, cultured, a gentleman. I should like to have a mind that is the absolute master of all that I do, a mind that can discriminate always between right and wrong, and then give commands that will be obeyed completely, perfectly. I should like to be clean, clean utterly, completely clean, and good to my tiniest thought. The ideal of perfection is my ideal, presumptuous perhaps, but after all, is it not glorious to strive for an ideal than which there is no greater, loftier?

[[underlined]] To Mother, March 7, 1926: [[/underlined]] Yesterday I took Allende out to dinner with me at "The Tavern," the testmen's favorite restaurant here. I find him delightful, so bright and animated, and his comments on things are so funny. For instance, here is a fragment of the conversation at dinner: (Walking along the line at the cafeteria) "Ah, I like those French fried potatoes. But these are rather -- er -- ah -- [[underline]] stout [[/underline]] ones. Ah, yes, if you please. And you may give me that piece of ham with the good-looking egg on it.....(Seated at the table) Now I feel most democratic when I sit down in heah with these pretty waitresses around. (A man heads for our table at that moment, intent on breaking in on our seclusion, and Allende gives him such a look that he sits down elsewhere) That is what I do in the morning to the bricklayers on the street car, for they have all their pots and trowels with them, and their clothes are covered with some sort of calcium. And, oh, their breaths are so strong of garlic. But when a pretty girl gets on, oh, I instantly feel so slender (he gives a demonstration of how he moves over in his

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