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25

  On New Year's Eve, Mother left for New York and thence to Buena Vista for the reopening of the Seminary. She said she'd had the best Christmas in her memory. Of course, the two children made it so. She'd been delighted with both of them and who wouldn't be? The house seemed a bit lonesome with Mother gone.

We went from putting Mother on the train, to Perk's apartment for a cocktail rendezvous prior to going to the Hunters Lodge New Year's Eve party. The day before, Perk, Lynch and I had paid a visit to "Rosie's" (my first) to procure some brandy for the party. Rosie was a thrifty, middle-aged French woman who'd once been a licensed winemaker in the old country. Gerry Hoddy, Ethel and Harold Ogden, Perk and his girl, Kay Hart, and Willie and I made up the group. And contrary to my statement in my 1931 write-up that I was never to see her again except on the street, Hoddy had a date with Mary Warner, whom he picked up later and the two of them joined us at the Lodge. The party was the usual wet affair with everyone feeling quite well including me. We were there in a larger party which included in addition to the few I've already mentioned, the Reeds, Lamborns, Harrises, Scarboroughs, Braunses, and Brandensteins. Little 1933 arrived while I was dancing with Mary Warner. At 2:30 a.m. Perk and Kay, and Gerry and Mary came to our house where we talked until 4:30 when they finally left and we hit the sack. As at the Griswold Club party at Conneaut Lake the previous year, Mary Warner made a powerful impression on me and, regarding my dancing with her as 1933 dawned, my diary inquires if this was a good omen, presumably for me because her youth and beauty seemed to recharge me in some strange way. She was one of the most unusual-looking youngsters I'd seen in a long time. She was still quite young, perhaps as much as six or eight years younger than I, but since I'd seen her the previous year, she both looked and acted much more mature. In 1931, she'd been an unsophisticated type, I thought, and very diffident. Now she had acquired both sophistication and self-confidence although still rather quiet. It seemed to me that she had depths it would take long friendship to plumb. She still had that clean, almost boyish face, regular features, perfectly lovely dark-brown eyes, and brown hair brushed back above her ears, and perfect teeth. Her smile, reavealing [sic] those teeth and sparkling out of those eyes, was really something to behold. She had a slender, lovely figure, rounded just enough--beautiful arms and back. As far as I was concerned, she brought a refreshing, perhaps thrilling, picture of youth to me who was now thirty and saw my own youth fast receding into the past. As far as true beauty was concerned, Willie was absolutely stunning although still a little too thin--but time would correct this. I think this was really my last close exposure to Mary Warner and when I finally heard of her relationship with Ruth Stevens, I was simply thunderstruck, almost unbelieving--but this was long afterward.