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when I wanted to see her again, talk over old days with her, I wanted to heal those wounds with an understanding friendship born of both our experiences, our wisdom gained with the years since 1923.  But I never did and as I recall it now, it was, I learned later, about the time I was considering writing her again that she died - in childbirth.  Probably I shall never even see her little girl.  And that is the point that always crushes me - would she have died, I wonder, if she had married me?  Perhaps she did not have proper care, perhaps many things that might have changed the whole course of her life.  But I thought I was doing right and maybe I was;  who will ever know?  Nevertheless, it hurts to think of it, and most of all to think I never saw her again.  If I had, and found her happy, it might be different.  But that one letter I had from her just made me feel she wasn't quite happy.  And I don't suppose I shall ever know that either.  Does she know now that I am thinking of her, writing this about her?  Or is her spirit vanished, gone, blanked out, ended, voided completely forever?

Erie, Pa.
Monday, Nov. 7, '38.
Ben and Tony were in for bridge last night and Tony especially all pepped up over their new house which is now being started.  I think of it wistfully.  There is nothing I should like to have much more but it seems a long way off, thanks to the G.E. Co. and the Depressions.  If I hadn't been a g- d- fool in 1929 and put all our money in the Market, we might have had one now - that was my fault.  But, ruling out that money the Colonel gave us, the G.E. doesn't pay me enough to carry