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Letter No. 1

Hotel Des Deux Mondes, Paris
May 13, 1919

[[note: THE STUDIO PRINT ASSOCIATION
799 BROADWAY
NEW YORK]]

My dearest Marion,

Am I dreaming or awake. I feel like acting as I look out from my window and see sights so different from those at home.but I realize that I am indeed far far away from you and the dear young folks at home and that is the thorne that keeps the rose from being all it might be. How impossible too to bridge the distance and make you feel and see all that is going on about me. I can only make a poor attempt at it. at the best on paper, not knowing where to begin or leave off.
 It is really going to be a problem writing letters back home that is anything of a descriptive nature or it will mean doind [[doing]] it over and over again especially if I keep up anything of a diary. It would become formidable so I think it may be a good sceem [[scheme]] if I combine letters and diary, that is what ever I enter as a record of my trip and experiences I can jot down in diary form and send on to you every littlewhile. This you can send on to Marion and Wendall to be returned to you and you can keep the sheets together in book form as a record. This matter would of course be more or less impersonal then [[than]] in the mean time I would write as many short letters to different members of the family and others as possible. What do you think of the plan  ?
 This particular letter will be more or less a combination affair and how can I better begin than by telling you if ever so inadaquitly [[inadequately]] of the wonderful and unique experience of last night, as a quest of Henry White at dinner. As you know of course that he is secretary of the delegation at the Peace Conference with Col. House and Sec. Lansing, and is chairman of the National Art Committee, by which I have been sent here to paint the three portraits for the National Gallery (King Albert,LLoyd George an Orlando)   I made a formal on White yesterday with Johansen but he was about leaving for the conference [[strikethrough]] with the Italian delegation. He was charmingly corgial [[cordial]], regretting he could not have a talk at the time but asked if we could take dinner with him that night at eight fifteen. Therefore I seen after dug out my dinner suit from the trunk which sadly needed pressing after its long confinement. At eight fifteen I was at the Hotel Crillion the official residence of the American Delegation and its headquarters. This building is one of the great palaces of Paris located on [[strikethrough]] one side of the splendid Place DeLa Concord. American soldiers were guarding at the apacious [[spacious]] portals, to a great hall way. A modern elevator carries one to the hall ways above. Mr. White occupying a large portion of the seond floor. Here a couple of U.S. soldiers, ordlies I suppose took our coats and we shown into a lofty room where a small table was set for four. Mr. Johansen and DeCamp were the other guests. Very soon Mr. White entered, a splendid looking man with a genial counternance [[countenance]] as you will see by the enclosed picture. After an exchange of greetings he took us out onto the balcony, a portico running the full length of the palace. The top of which supported by emmence [[immense]] columns like some of those at the Vatican. From here we looked down and over the beautiful place De La Concord. About four or five times the area of Madison Square. An empossing [[imposing]] bridge crosses the Seine, at the opposite side. Pointing at this bridge Mr. White said "He stood on that bridge in 1867 and came very near being crushed in a great crowd" adding that he was seventeen years old at that time. I told him that I was also seventeen years old when I first crossed it in 1873. So here we stood about talking in the beautiful sight with the full moon rising over the group of hundreds of captured German Canons,  which bordered the square. Mr. White told us hoe a French avaitor [[aviator]] had