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[[preprinted]] 
TREASURY DEPARTMENT
INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE
CHICAGO 4, ILL.

[[image: circular logo depicting a set of scales above a key surrounded by a laurel wreath]]
OFFICE OF THE COLLECTOR
FIRST DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

IN REPLYING REFER TO 

^[[noted TP]]

[[image: boxed-in line drawing of a man holding a rifle with the words, "FOR VICTORY  BUY UNITED STATES WAR BONDS AND STAMPS"]]  
[[/preprinted]]

April 26, 1944

Mr. Walter Pach
% Palmer House,
Chicago, Illinois.

My dear Mr. Pach:

I certainly do not take your asking to see my small collection of French paintings at all amiss.  However, as they were all bought in Paris, either on trips around the world - my wife and I made two of them, one east, the other west, to convince myself that Voliva of Zion City was in error in saying the word was not round but flat as a pancake, on a round trip to Indo-China to shoot an animal the British call Saladang and the French Gaur, for trips up the Nile, ^[[or to Nairobi for a bit of African game shooting,]] or just to bum around Paris, my funds were so exhausted I was never able to go heavily on art purchases.  As a result I bought things I liked rather than with the idea of their having lasting artistic merit.  I was fortunate enough, however, to get in early on Lautrec drawings and lithographs, four Pascin paintings, three Goërgs, a pair of Utrillos, a fine Vlaminck etc., which some years ago I gave to the Chicago Art Institute ^[[,]] making a condition that they be held together for 25 years after my death, after which time to be disposed of according to the Institute's desires.  I told Mr. Harshe, by that time there might be some way of communicating with the other world - certainly developments in my lifetime are almost enough to make such a thing seem possible ^[[-]] and I would be able to learn how good ^[["]] a picker ^[["]] I had been.  A further proviso was that during my wife's and my lives, when we are in Chicago ^[[,]] the paintings would hang in our hotel rooms.

So if you will phone me on your arrival (Harrison 4700, Ext. 140) I shall be glad to pick you up at any hour you name and taxi you to the Parkway Hotel.

I recall very well meeting you at the Chicago edition of the Armory show way back in 1913.  I think it was in company with my friend of long standing, the late Arthur J. Eddy, who "fell for" modernism at the prior New York show.  Personally I drifted toward it in 1911, when I bought two small oils of Jerome Blum, who was one of the first of the American modernists.  He became one while pursuing art studies in France.

I shall be glad to meet and renew our acquaintance.

Sincerely yours,

[[signed]] Carter H. Harrison [[/signed]]
Carter H. Harrison.