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Erie, Pa.,
Thursday, October 14, 1926.

Made our fifty-mile bearing run today with no trouble whatsoever. It was a marvelous day too; as I stood out on the platform, I took everything in. Smoothly and silently we glided along through the vineyards heavy with great blue clusters of grapes. The air was like wine with its sweetness. And overhead the sky was pale blue, the blue of the declining year, while away across fields colored with the browns and straw of autumn, lay the great lake, ultramarine in the sunlight. The air was fresh and clean and chill and sweet, the sun bright, the world beautiful, and through my heart as in the days gone by, there sang a lovely, lovely song of pure joy at the glory of every-thing.

Erie, Pa.,
Friday, October 15, 1926.

Took voltage distribution and wheel slipping on my locomotive today, then weighed her and installed the temporary pantograph for the high-speed run next Monday for Mr. Katte. This evening Cooke and I had an interesting conversation. from what I already knew and what I learned tonight, I could write a novel about Cooke. He is a splendid-looking fellow, tall and quite handsome, although his face bears the marks of bitter experience. The first time I ever met him, I said, "Here's a gentleman, brought up in a family of culture and importance." I now know he comes from a good family -- I judge a cultured, well-to-do family in Providence. I should say that Cooke had been easygoing and when he entered Brown in 1916, continued so, being kicked out of college before he completed his freshman year. He must have had a great awakening because of this for he cut loose from home, family and friends and bummed his way west, eventually bringing up in Prescott, Arizona. For five years he bummed, rode or drove around the southwest doing a little of everything, sometimes with no money at all and obliged to actually beg meals to keep from starving; in fact, once he went for five days with nothing to eat at all. He was in the Forest Service of the State of California for eight months, worked in the lemon orchards, ranched, railroaded, hoboed, tried everything and did manage to get some summer school work at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena. He said, "To be near starving and obliged to go to back doors and beg a meal, takes the pride out of anyone if they have any in them at all." Finally he returned home in 1924 and reentered Brown that fall; and this time, he worked and graduated in [[underlined]] two [[/underlined]] years. Now he's a GE testman and perhaps the finest and best-liked of us all. I'm sure he's one of the straightest, cleanest, finest fellows I've ever met. He has some great experiences to tell. I'll always remember the story of the little black kitten they rescued from jumping over the side of a gondola car in Prescott just as they were starting home, and how Cooke carried the kitten inside his shirt all the way to Buffalo where he finally lost him in a Nickel Plate box-

Transcription Notes:
Added page number. Also corrected: if a word is hyphenated because it goes across two lines, type it out as one word.