with Paul, to see him plodding along and getting the stuff
carefully and deliberately done while I was racing ahead in-
side and back again before he had almost started! Coming back
in the tube I picked up a cold bug and was laid up for a day
but it's gone now. Don't for God's sake come back until you
have to. You are lucky to have these long months of rest and
I hope they will carry you well through the Winter.

Our room has been painted and now the floors are being
scraped and stained and it really looks fresh and clean and
bright. Soon the pictures will go up (one or two) and with
books and quiet there should be some contentment during the
Winter. It will be lovely to have you back again. Last night
Paul and I both made out our wills! It's a funny feeling for
one always feels as if the rest of the world must die but
not yourself. Well, I guess I'll be fooled if the laws of
Nature hold out till that time. N special dispensations for
La Beckalina. I am getting restless and bored by my daily
routine. When I think that the whole wide world is floating
around and I have only seen Noo Yawk well-- G-r-r-r-r-r--.
Someday I'm going off. Break tracks and get into trouble.
If Donald is still there, Ida and Catherine recall me to them.

I am reading Anderson's *Vie* and am alternately bored, amused, interested and admiring. He certainly is most honest about himself and yet what he says he has done is in a way so dis-honest that you don't know which is which. There are some very moving passages and some that seem little and over-thought and unsuccessful. A lot of people will be sore about it, especially the people who employed him as an advertising agent in Chicago ! Maybe! He certainly is interested in himself a lot and that's the way to wear the golden crown and sceptre and to carry the bulging pocketbook I guess!

Paul will write soon. Do let us have news of you again.

Stay as long as you can but come back soon. Greetings to G.

Your somewhat perplexed but amused

Beckalina Salsburina Strandálina

November 11th, 1924

Dearest L.F.

I find myself in the phenomenal position of having two hours here at the office with nothing to do, everything being cleaned up to the minute. You have been great about writing when the days remaining before you return are so few and it pleases me much. The day that Paul met Bleumner at Weyhe's he went to Neumann's and happened to tell N. about O.B's work, etc., and apparently N. looked up for this morning we had an announcement of an exhibition of B's at the gallery which we are going to see after five today. I do hope it will mean something for Bleumner. We are somewhat bent financially but will try to dig up enough somewhere to buy one of this things.

I went to the Anderson gallery the other day to see Sime's pantings and pulled an awful bone with Grant by saying that I had rather thought that I would see some of the things made of Lake George and Grant toted me over and showed me three that I had not recognized as being Lake George or any other spot on the earth! The things are hung along the two walls in the hall outside the 4th floor gallery and look prim and Simish. Grant says they are selling for about $15 a piece and that he has sold about 22 of them. He asked me if I wanted to indulge etc., etc., Then I went in to the auction room and there was the same auctioneer selling a Chinese collection of porcelains and vases of Bernard Blick, one I presume of the 6,000,000 Jews in New York City. The things went for rien. The Gallery is the same. Same elevator boy, same Grant and Smith, same boys at the door, same everything and so it will be until Alfy comes back and then there will probably be a difference.

Paul spent the last Sunday in Boston and went to the Museum but could not see your prints as they were all locked up somewhere and the custodian was not available. Saw the Oriental things however.

I must tell you that Mother is delighted with the photograph. She shows it to everybody who comes in and tells them that you made it. She thinks it "bewitching" and bright and clear and so on and really I know from the way she speaks of it that it means a lot to her. Everyone who sees it thinks it is quite wonderful. Mother has had the grippe and I have been quite low because of a talk with my brother who says that while he still has the same unalterable affection for me he cannot forget his experience with Paul and that they never can be friends. What I can see ahead is that when Mother dies and there is no longer that holding us together I shall drift apart from my brother because by excluding Paul he automatically excludes me. This he does not see and I must say that I feel like a fool for being so darn patient and so considerate of him when he can think only of his own preciousness in not being a "hypocrite" etc., and all that kind of immature bosh. For the first time I feel hard about it and begin to question my feeling for him for surely Paul has proved in a hundred ways that he has gone way beyond his then present immaturity, but apparently that kind of struggle and growth means nothing while the original confused and angry experience remains.

<table><tr><td>REGISTER</td></tr><tr><td>OR</td></tr><tr><td>INSURE</td></tr><tr><td>VALUABLE MAIL</td></tr></table>

DOCTOR DUDLEY ROBERTS

270 PARK AVENUE
NEW YORK
TELEPHONE, MURRAY HILL 0160

Sept. 12th, 1925

Dearest Little Fellow:-

Its blazing hot and Dr. Roberts is in the country and I here
with a moment from duties to send you a few lines that bring love
and pleasure that you are at least having a peaceful summer if not
a very active one. The old grind is on again after a heavenly
month near the sea. I made quite a few little photographs which I
shall sometime show you. Amusing and m de after a ten-minute curtain
talk by Mr. Paul Strand on the complexities of an Eastman Graflex
after which I went ahead. They are at least in focus and possibly
nothing more. I made a few paintings also in Maine which were
fun. Everything is y ry lethargic here - the intestine and bowel -
people not yet having returned to town - but they will soon with
their insides all askew from lapses from diet, the lure of oysters,
highballs, cocktails, etc. and will have to be straightened out
laboriously and boringly. I am therefore cutting barbed wire trying
to get Dr. Roberts to write a brand new book on gastro-enterology -
he has the time and enormous ability and i refuse to leaf although
its good for the health. I know that once he got started he would
go like mad and I'd probably be weary, but I'm game for that too.
He invited us to his estate over the week end but the place is to
be full of railroad presidents and bankers and as i prefer jockeys
and tent peg drivers I shied off. Mother is moving to 161 West 75th
St to an apartment of her own, my brother, wife and infant to be
in an immediately adjoining apartment. I think it will work better
than the old plan. If the baby has colic mother would not sleep
and so its better for her to be by herself. All my friends are
having babies at a terrific rate and I am kept financially frenzied
giving them appropriate gifts. Dr. Roberts has promised that when
mine comes he will endow it with the royalties from the book we do
and to be its godfather. So that's a start; In addition to the
fact that I have been pronounced gynecologically PERFECT by a com-
petent medico and my mind set at rest on many problems on that
score so there you are.

Did you know that Bill Rapp is married again? To the first wife
of George Cram Cook - Mollie somebody - who is about again as old
as he and has two grown and str pping children. We had a gay evening
with them recently and she's a nice person. Does all the "fixing" jobs
for Bernarr McFadden. She has supported herself and her two children
all these years through her writing so she has good stuff in her. They
are happy together. Bill says that George is slowly pulling back to
normal and Marie and the babes well and getting along all right.