Dear Bess:

   This is the day sixteen years ago that I made a plunge and took a chance for which I have been a better man. My only regret is that it was not done ten years sooner. I hope Red Sands did his duty today. You really don't deserve a letter or a telegram or any flowers. I only got a postcard and an answering telegram.

  I am going to punish you by not mailing this until tomorrow morning. I have found time to think of you and write you every day. I wonder if you are now or ever have been sorry you did it on June 28, 1919. You see you have been married to a financial failure and the reason for that is that I have always believed in doing as I'd be done by, and to make money and keep it you must be a pirate or strike an oil well or a gold mine. Had I not been a fool patriot in 1917, I'd had the oil well. And maybe would have turned pirate and been successful. I am hoping to make a reputation as a Senator, though if I live long enough that'll make the money successes look like cheese. But you'll have to put up with a lot if I do it because I won't sell influence and I'm perfectly willing to be cussed if I'm right.

  I've never had but one golden-haired, blue-eyed sweetheart and she's still the same blue-eyed, but now maybe silver-haired, sweetheart and just as perfect and as beautiful as I dreamed of when I was ten and twelve and sixteen.

  I am at the flat writing this at four-thirty. The Senate recessed at five-thirty yesterday to Monday. I could have made the New York trip but didn't do it because Harrison [Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi] invited me to a meeting at [Joseph P.] Kennedy's house at seven o'clock this evening. Kennedy runs the Securities Commission and I ought to know him....

Kiss Margie, love to you, Harry