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422 UNION NATIONAL BANK BUILDING
TEL: 3-2814

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WICHITA, KANSAS
September 18, 1941
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air mail

Mr. Germain Seligmann
5 East 57th Street
New York City

Dear Germain:

I thank you very much for your letter of September 16th and hope that when your client again sees the painting by Quillard he will love it so much that he will buy it for a good price.

I am very grateful to you for your thoughtfulness in sending me a clipping relating the sale of my wine cellar in Paris. This is very interesting, but wine is so scarce in France that they are paying exorbitant prices for it. Some Red Bordeaux, which I bought in 1917 for six francs a bottle, fetched nearly one hundred fifty francs a bottle.

I heard that the good pieces of furniture and works or art which I had sent to Bordeaux during the last days of the invasion have been brought back to Paris, and I suppose they will be sold at auction shortly. I hear they are all exhibited at the "Jeu de Paume." At the present value of works of art in francs, I suppose they will fetch a lot of money but it doesn't do me any good because the Vichy government will confiscate all that money; but I am sure to get every cent of it back as soon as the Germans are defeated and the Vichy crowd are ousted.

Thanks for your congratulations on my success in the oil field. I am very grateful for them, and since yesterday I certainly deserve congratulations because I just drilled another maximum well, which is flowing, and I consider myself very lucky. Since arriving here, I have been working very hard and have been able to lease about 2000 acres in a good territory, and it seems that I have had an excellent hunch. I have had no time to go back to New York or take even one single day's vacation. I am sorry to say that I drilled one dry hole, which means a loss of at least $10,000 but, of course, I am extremely happy in now having three very good wells, all located in an A-1 territory. 

I expect to be in New York some time in October, and need not tell you how happy I will be to see you again.

With best regards, I am, 

Yours very sincerely, 

Edouard Jonas

EJ.rw