Mrs Gwendolyn Bennett,
64 Brooklyn Avenue,
Brooklyn, New York.

Rather than a dog, I would choose a cat. It has for me
the manners essential to social relations. At first, in
its early youth, it possesses all the graces, suppleness,
unexpectedness by which the most exacting, artistic fancy
can be amused! It is adroit, it always knows where it is.
Prudent unto caution, it goes everywhere, it examines with-
out soiling, breaking nothing; it is in itself a warmth and
a caress; it has not a snout, but a mouth — and what a
mouth! It is discreet and of fastidious cleanliness — it
cannot be enslaved . . . . It is a dignified, proud, dis-
tainful animal that hides its love affairs in the shadows
. . . . . . It defies advances, tolerates no insults, abandons
the house in which it is not treated according to its merits.
..... In short, truly an aristocrat in type and origin.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

TELEPHONE EDGECOMBE 9600

NEW YORK URBAN LEAGUE, INC.

202-4 W. 136TH STREET
NEW YORK CITY

JAMES H. HUBERT
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY

IRA D&A. REID
INDUSTRIAL SECRETARY

My dear Miss Bennett:

I have just heard of your father's untimely death. Unfortunate, indeed. As Byron says:

"--- It is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood."

May I extend to you and Mrs Bennett a
sympathy that only they who have similarly en-
dured may know.

August 14 1926.

12 December 1961

Dear Gwen and Dick:

The bulk of this letter is for Dick, the one person I know on the faculty of Walden School, and it is really to the faculty I am addressing the enclosed appeal. Yet I cannot possibly address a letter to Dick without addressing Gwen also, especially at this season of the year which is so full of memories for me of Gwen and her wonderfully welcoming Christmas parties.

The card, I think, is self-explanatory. Sometime when I see you I'll tell you of this pilgrimage to visit my English origins, and how I recognized the look of the country the moment the train turned south from the junction at Barnstaple. "That's the Torridge," I said suddenly to the couple in the compartment with me, "and if the train would stop and I could get down, I'd find winkles on the sand." Astonished they asked, "How did you know?" And I answered, "My mother told me when I was a little girl."

The appeal for blood donations, Dick, is also self-explanatory. The need is indeed urgent: it is not a matter of life and death within a few hours, but it is a matter of life for Jane for the next year. She needs four pints of blood every three or three and a half weeks. This is somewhat more than 50 pints a year, which means that if she is to have it without cost to her, over 100 pints must be donated to her credit (the Blood Banks require one pint to defray expenses of testing and collecting for each pint donated).

I am frankly having the temerity of enclosing ten copies of the appeal letter, Dick, in the hope that you can use them for the Walden faculty, possibly some strapping students who remember Jane, and some of the parents who, I am sure, will remember the sterling service she gave to the Walden library. I have no hesitation in making this request, which is for the continued life of someone who gave a great deal to Walden, and who is, moreover, a very wonderful person.

Please do what you can. The only way I could hope to build up a substantial credit for Jane at the University Hospital Blood Bank was to involve everyone who knows her -- to summon the hosts, that is, as we have so often done in the past, and not in vain.

With our love and Christmas greetings,

185 Hall Street
Brooklyn 5, N. Y.
5 December 1961

Dear Friend:

Representing a group of people who have known and loved for many years a remarkable woman, Mrs. Jane Reed of 520 East 12th Street, New York City, I am appealing to you for a life-giving gift for her, a pint of your blood donated to her credit at the University Hospital Blood Bank.

Jane Reed is suffering from hemolytic anemia, a blood disorder in which her own healthy red blood cells are attacked and destroyed by antagonistic blood cells. The only effective treatment is routine transfusions of fresh blood, given rather frequently so that the new red cells can carry oxygen to her lungs for all the life processes. Blood commercially supplied costs $100 for each treatment by transfusion, a cost she has been able to bear personally in the past but can no longer cover without great hardship in the months ahead.

Her friends, and the friends of her friends, can help her to continue to function as normally as possible by donating a pint of our blood to her credit, and at the same time we can relieve her of heavy financial stress -- something that is harder to bear when one is already ill. By making this gift we can also assure her of our love and of the value we place on her friendship and her contributions to society over a period of many years. We shall, moreover, be supporting the efforts of her devoted physicians, Dr. Norman Alisberg, Dr. Marilyn Schittone and other physicians of the New York Medical Group, who have given her medical care beyond the call of ordinary duty.

How to give blood to the credit of Jane Reed. Go to the University Hospital Blood Bank, 302 East 20th Street, New York City (across the street from the main entrance to the hospital). The Blood Bank is open every week day from 9:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M., and on Saturdays from 9:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. No appointment is necessary. State that you are making the donation to the Credit of Mrs. Jane Reed, a patient of Drs. Alisberg and Schittone.

Your blood will be tested, your blood pressure taken, and a few routine questions will be asked you to determine whether it is advisable for you to give blood. If you are rejected, you may be able to donate blood later, or you may have a friend who can donate in your place. If you are accepted, perhaps you would consider donating again (the Blood Bank will tell you when you may do so), because Jane's need is continuing.

The donation itself can be made in twenty to thirty minutes, but it is better not to go at noon when the Blood Bank is sometimes full with professional donors. After you have been to the Blood Bank, you might like to send Jane a card (her address is in the first paragraph), for whether you have been accepted or rejected, she will know that you have made the effort, and that she is far from alone in fighting her illness.

Thank you most warmly for hearing this appeal and doing about it whatever you can. On behalf of Jane Reed's many friends, I am

Dear Friend:

### How to give blood to the credit of Jane Reed.
Go to the University Hospital Blood Bank, 302 East 20th Street, New York City (across the street from the main entrance to the hospital). The Blood Bank is open every week day from 9:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M., and on Saturdays from 9:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. No appointment is necessary. State that you are making the donation to the Credit of Mrs. Jane Reed, a patient of Drs. Alisberg and Schittone.

Dear Friend:

Her friends, and the friends of her friends, can help her to continue to function as normally as possible by donating a pint of our blood to her credit, and at the same time we can relieve her of heavy financial stress — something that is harder to bear when one is already ill. By making this gift we can also assure her of our love and of the value we place on her friendship and her contributions to society over a period of many years. We shall, moreover, be supporting the efforts of her devoted physicians, Dr. Norman Alisberg, Dr. Marilyn Schittone and other physicians of the New York Medical Group, who have given her medical care beyond the call of ordinary duty.

185 Hall Street

Brooklyn 5, N. Y.

5 December 1961

Dear Friend:

Dear Friend:

Dear Friend: