Viewing page 24 of 44

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

some of it so far. I am always impressed by such a sight--I feel then the great moving drama of life as at no other time. It is wonderful.

And then I went up to the park where the band was finishing its concert--playing airs from some of the great operas. And I thought how the composers, the poets, the great writers, live forever in their work. This is Mr. Dutton's idea of immortality. The music of Wagner will thrill people throughout all the ages. Keats sweet songs in words will pass on from generation to generation--a thing of beauty is a joy forever. They are the men who can die satisfied, for they have done the world great service. And yet, after all, are not all those great who simply do their best? Yes, in the great scale of life, greatness must be relative, a percentage of what one does to what one could do. That would be the only fair way. Gray's Elegy tells that story.

Here I am in work to thrill the imagination of any boy. Oh, I pray God for the appreciation of all my blessings.

Erie, Pa.,
September 15, 1927.

Today saw me struggling with the new Spanish Northern proposition and appreciating that most of us are inclined to take propositions too lightly. They are business in the making. Every job has been a proposition at some time. I believe, rather unoriginally too, that any job that is worth doing, is worth doing seriously and worth the best we can give it. Such an attitude, I know, will lead to success--it must. Success is built on ideals consummated. I am now edging my way into the real business, heavy traction electrification. Two years ago this would not have seemed real--today a reality. How lucky I am.

Brock and Schlee, having flown east from Detroit to Tokyo, have abandoned their flight across the Pacific under the urge of public opinion and their families. I think it is best but understand their disappointment.

[[underlined]] To Mother, September 18, 1927. [[/underlined]] As long as Willie wrote you in New York, I though I should wait and write to Buena Vista. Almost this very minute, you must be leaving the Pennsylvania Terminal in New York and plunging into the depths and darkness of the Hudson Tubes. And tomorrow you shall awake to see the lovely Blue Ridge ranging away into the distance, to see the South, the cabins on the hillsides, the drakes, the red soil, to feel the southern air, to know you have entered a different land--and all overnight. For somehow the South is different, with its ways, its voices, its people, its atmosphere of informality and hospitality. I shall love to hear your account of it all and your experiences in the school. It [[underlined]] will [[/underlined]] be a decidedly new experience, I should think, and bound to be interesting in many ways.