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Dear Doris:

I woke up from a dream of you this morning,- you were a little girl (as usual) and I was bringing you home from somewhere you had been by yourself, and you were all battered up and so thin and [[crossed out]] sick [[/crossed out]] pitiful that I was terribly worried about you and you said to me, "Play pussycat with me mama," and I woke up crying over you. That really reflects my feeling now,- I am not criticizing you, but I am worried for you, fearful that your present episode will get you into more unhappiness and trouble.   I have been more or less consciously for many years now one who hasn't too much use for men in their relation to women.  We are the down trodden ones always. I remember when I first started work— a man said to me "who ever heard of a woman entomologist? When I began work at the Bur. of Ento. I came in as clerk, because I had no particular training in entomology, [[?]] [[?]], [[strikethrough]] and [[/strikethrough]] but I quickly I got it under old Dr. Chittenden, and advanced to the role of scientific assistant, then asst entomologist, and then my troubles began. The men wouldn't stand for having me, a woman, there doing identification work and writing scientific papers. Every paper I wrote was so torn to pieces by them that Dad used to say it was vicious and uncalled for, and when the depression of the 30s came, they fired me. Buchanan, one of the men, said to me, "Don't you ever try to come back." (They said if I would go back to being a preparator, mounting insects I would stay!) Now I was right in the midst of interesting research, and I didn't ever leave! There was no place given me, to work in so I went to Dr Witmore, the Director, and asked if I might work up in the dorm. He allowed it, and there I worked for 25 years, and all that time I had to put up with jealousy (because I could work [[strikethrough]] there [[/strikethrough]] on my own research without doing identifications etc) and rebuffs. Doris Cochran went thru the same thing. She came in about the same time as I, in 1917 as an artist, and worked up to [[?]] asst for old Dr Steenign all the rest of his life. Alltho he was retired he kept on coming [[?]] into his 90's, while she did all the work and never got promoted to head of the division till [[strikethrough]] after his [[/strikethrough]] long after his death. One of the men said no woman would ever get that job, so she knew 

Transcription Notes:
Bur. of Ento. = Bureau of Entomology