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Erie, Pa.,
Sunday, April 21, '40.

Willie and I went over to pay our last respects to Ruth Stevens this morning. She was lying at the far end of the sun room amid banks of flowers as if she were asleep - and she looked at peace and quite natural for what she has been through in the last two weeks. It is a God's mercy she died. We didn't see Mr. Stevens. I rather dreaded seeing Ruth but was glad I did afterward. She looked so natural - and it was good to know she was lying there at peace, the long, tragic battle over with a last. I doubt if anyone knows what a battle it has been. And again in my mind I compared my first impression of her when I saw the picture, with this last impression, lying there in young and ultra-tragic death. What a contrast! The end of the story.

While Bab played with "Betsy" Cain, Rog, Willie and I took a ride this afternoon out to McKean and home via Sterrettania and the airport. It was not too springlike - 40ish and the sun having a hard time getting a look through the clouds. But the winter wheat is green, faint color shows in the bare woods, grass is brighter - in another week or so, spring will break in all its loveliness. And we have ahead now six beautiful months. I hope we shall appreciate them fully, realizing how fortunate we are here in America in this fateful spring of 1940. And the way things are going abroad, one wonders if we shall still be at peace when the next spring rolls around. Let us pray so - and let us pray that Right will prevail in the war going on in Europe.