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She said she would like to come to Erie for a weekend and I said we would love to have her come any time and that seemed to make her feel better. Spend 2 1/2 hours with her between trains this afternoon and am very glad I stopped as I think it did her good.

Yesterday in the barbershop I looked at the latest issue of "Pic", one of the more sensational picture magazines that have sprung up since "Life" started, and suddenly I saw a familiar face looking at me, smiling, from "Pic's Album of Famous Murders"! It was Phil Knapp! And they had four pages of pictures of his career climaxed by his "thrill murder" of a New York taxi driver in 1926. They caught him in 1931 and today he is in Sing Sing for life - the last tragic shot was a full page of Phil looking out from his cell through the bars. The hard, bitter, desperate look was such a tragic contrast to the first picture I noticed and recognized of Phil as I knew him in high school and college, smiling and clean looking, and happy. One wonders if even then he had the beginnings of the ideas that led to his ruin.

Coming over on the train this morning through the lovely vineyard country of Chautauqua County clothed in winter white, the vast stretches of the icy lake, the hills and forest clad in snow, I knew life is good - that so many times we lose sight of the truly worthwhile things in our struggle for fame and success - taste, health, youth, love of beauty. What would life be worth without them!

Put up here at the Hendrick Hudson in Troy tonight prepared for North Adams tomorrow. Got off at Albany and came up here on the bus. Glad to get to bed - I'm tired. A hard week!