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15 

In February I received a letter from Doris. In her AT&T library job, she'd been given my AIEE paper to catalog and file and that had set things in motion again. I've already recorded this in my 1902-1924 treatise in recounting Doris' tragedy in dying in 1933 in her first childbirth. When I received this letter, which she'd mailed to me at the plant, the address given on the AIEE paper and the only one she knew, I was very happy to hear from her again and hoped that sometime we could see each other again in New York, where I went often on business. Her address was Mrs. D. M. Allen, 195 Broadway, Room 1111. I answered her letter promptly and told her I hoped we could have lunch together sometime but we never did because I never could seem to find a free time to propose it to her. After learning of her death, I regretted bitterly that I'd not found time. For Doris as well as Louie Neill had been quite precious to me at one time and through them I was linked to those happy, carefree days at college in a way that nothing else could seem to accomplish -- with Westminster hill, Thornden, sunrise breakfasts, youth and first loves and some sweet things that I could never know again. That was why, at the time, I wished I might sit with Doris and talk over a candlelighted table all by ourselves about the youthful things we'd done and which were still but wouldn't be for much longer. I was reminded too of that night at Louie's when we talked together in the candlelight. She was dressed in a soft, silk print, young and dark-eyed and serious and very lovely, and she said to me with great earnestness, "Forie, how I should like to see you ten years from now." And now, in 1932, the ten years had nearly passed and I wondered if I had fulfilled that implied promise. I was afraid not.

For it was indeed a time to try people's character. Things were getting worse steadily. In mid-March there was the announcement of a new 10% salary cut April 1st and this would be the first that we'd feel seriously. One was inclined to say, "What the hell! What's the use anyhow?" However, after calming down, you learned to roll with the punches. Obviously, it was no time to think of quitting and looking for something else when my job was the most important asset I had at the moment. And so I drove myself at my job harder than ever and told myself that, by God, I'd make myself the biggest and most promising man in the place and above all else, no quitter. Figuratively, I whipped myself to keep going, to keep competing. A few days after the announcement of the April 1st cut, we were driving to work one morning and Spring was definitely in the air. And as we drove east along the Lake Road, I looked across at the blue water covered with white ice flows beyond the straight and lovely poplars along the high shore. I reflected that depressions couldn't dull the beauty of all this, beauty that continued in spite of the mistakes and mismanagement of men. Here were the real value, values that never shrank. We had everything and didn't even know it.