Viewing page 1 of 117

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

National Museum, Wash. D.C.
31 Oct. 1946.

Dear Doris:

I think of you tonight up there where the Hallowe'en is not celebrated as it is down here, and you are not out getting hand-outs and watching the merry-makers. Perhaps there will be some sort of little party for you. It is a perfect night for the youngsters, - mild, half-moonlit. There will be a dearth of soap and we may escape having our car decorated. I must buy some thing for handouts before I go home.

To-day Dad brought me and my typewriter down here on his day in. I have stayed at home the first of the week struggling to get over this old cold. Not much left but a few sneezes occasionally. We put the old cat out under the piazza -- he had been sleeping within a few feet of me all the time I have been home and liberally distributing his fleas.

One of the men has just come back from a trip to Cambridge and tells me that Darlington told him that he saw you over at the Museum there. He evidently remembered you. He is a nice chap. He is building a house out in Belmont Sometime run in and see Miss Bryant on her Mon. Wed. or Fri. days. Are you ever going to invite any of them to dine with you or don't they have visitors much? I owe Miss Bryant a meal.

The Williamses have had a big load of cinder blocks dumped in their front yard. I was out in the sun drying my hair yesterday when they came. I wonder if they are planning still another addition. You said, I recall, that they wanted a dining room or something else. Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Penny, Mrs. Douglas, and Mrs. Burdette were all out raking leaves and burning them, and as the wind was south all the smoke came my way. I could have walloped the lot of them. It is a relief to be down here to-day away from my southern neighbors. I brought a bunch of chrysanthemums for Miss Carpenter. Haven't seen Sophy, this is her day to take the afternoon off to go to College Park for her course in Insect Morphology. She and two other girls from here go. One of them has just acquired a new car so they drive out together. Sophy wants a car badly.

You don't say anything about your English work. Is it strenuous? Do you have themes every week or just now and then? What do you write about? I suppose you will be staying in this weekend to cram for that history test and that we shall not get much of a letter from you because of it. I am glad you have one easy subject in Biology. The Botany next course ought to be pretty easy too after Dad's course last year. You will probably have a lot more laboratory work than with him. He is so relieved not to be giving it this year that he says he has a mind not to give it ever again. I don't think he will unless he gets paid more for it. They have gone up on tuition but don't pay the teachers any more and it made him mad. But I think things are going to smash before many more months and goodness knows where we shall all be then. There has got to be some sort of economic readjustment to get us in line with the rest of the world.

Have you ever seen any of the other D.C.girls? the colored one or the June Downey that got a scholarship? Does the Swingle child live in your dormitory? Miss Colcord was talking about her mother the other day. You know she is a librarian in the Dept.Agr. She is Swingle's 2nd wife, very smart. He is a lot over 70, and noone likes him. Old Chip used to tell how he was stationed at