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450
134
#33 Ferry Avenue,
Detroit, Michigan,
December 23rd, 1905.

My dear Tom:--
Your letter of November 8th was duly received in Detroit and forwarded to me at the Berkshires, where at that time I was spending a few days on my farm. From the Berkshires I went to New York and back to Detroit, but before an opportunity offered to reply to your letter I was again called East, and to-day is my first chance to write you. But before entering into the more important matters let me say that my last trip East was in answer to a call from the President, who invited me to visit at the White House, for the purpose of discussing my proposed gift to the Smithsonian Institution. Without tiring you with the many details of the visit let me say that the President and Mrs. Roosevelt, along with all the members of the Cabinet, and naturally enough of the better class citizens of Washington, are deeply interested in my proposed gift and they are doing all that they possibly can to have the gift accepted, and as the President wrote me, "without further haggling."
The trouble seems to be that some of the Regents of the Smithsonian, as well as some members of both the Senate and House of Representatives, feel it wiser to not admit the fine arts into the Smithsonian collections; but, instead, to keep the Institution nailed firmly to matters of purely scientific interest.