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[[preprinted]]
TELEPHONE, MONROE 825

[[image: oval seal with the words ALLIED PRINTING TRADES COUNCIL CHICAGO]]
^[[Gretchen]]

1437 WEST OHIO STREET
CHICAGO
[[/preprinted]]

May 6, 1914.

Dearest Dad:-

Thank you ever and ever so much for your letter which I was so exceedingly happy and glad to get. It must indeed be pokey beyond words to have to lie so long and especially hard for anybody who has been as active as you have all your life. I think you are a thousand saints rolled into one, and I am sure that you will be rewarded by suddenly finding yourself quite well and strong again.

We have planted two new wonderful grape-fruits in your honor. They are called the Foster Grapefruit and have pink flesh and are supposed to be especially fine. As far as we know they are the only ones in Hernando County as none of the other growers have yet introduced them here. Then we have named the great big palm after you, and I will send you a photograph both of the little grape fruit tree and of the palm. Just think we have put in over eight hundred plantings!

How we wish you might have been with us yesterday. We went to the annual gathering at Lake Lindsey to put the little cemetery into shape by raking up all the dead leaves and things and putting in some plantings for the spring. About two hundred people were present, men, women and children. We all gathered for luncheon under the big trees by the church and had a general community luncheon. Olive Sullivan and Mary went over in the buggy and Raymond, Fielder and I plus the provisions went in the wagon. We carried one whole ham, eight quarts of beet and bean salad, four quarts of potato salad, four dozen biscuit and a prune soufle pudding made of four pounds of prunes and nine eggs which was baked in a huge milk pan. This constituted our share and as our ham was the only one it was so popular that almost the bone was scraped clean.

There is a very nice German family here in the neighborhood recent comers, Mr. and Mrs. Priester by name. They have two darling little children, a little girl and a little boy. Mary and I are going over to their home today and we hope to have them for dinner Friday and then I will write you more about them.

We are having a wonderfully cool spring and it is really so beautiful here that we hate to think of leaving.