Dear Bess:

   This has been a very dull Sunday. I came up here last night to a Legion affair and stayed all night and I'm still here at noon. It was a good party but I had to leave it. As usual they got too rough and I'm still in politics. . . .

  Tomorrow I'll be forty-nine and for all the good I've done the forty might as well be left off. Take it all together though the experience has been worthwhile; I'd like to do it again. I've been in a railroad, bank, farm, war, politics, love (only once and it still sticks), been busted and still am and yet I have stayed an idealist. I still believe that my sweetheart is the ideal woman and that my daughter is her duplicate. I think that for all the horrors of war it still makes a man if he's one to start with. Politics should make a thief, a roue, and a pessimist of anyone, but I don't believe I'm any of them and if I can get the Kansas City courthouse done without scandal no other judge will have done as much, and then maybe I can retire as collector and you and the young lady can take some European and South American tours when they'll do you most good; or maybe go to live in Washington and see all the greats and near greats in action. We'll see. I'm counting the days till I see you.

Lots of love to you both,

Harry