Grandview, Mo.
October 1, 1911
Dear Bessie:
I got your letter day before yesterday and I certainly appreciate it. I hope your finger has healed all right.
While I think of it, A Man Without a Country was written by Rev. Ed Ev. Hale. I am sure because I saw an extract from it Friday night. Would you care to see Pinafore? It comes to the Shubert next week I think. I thought if you cared to go to a matinee, we could go out and see the Miss Macks afterwards. I don't know on what days they'll have their afternoon shows but whichever one suits you best would be all right with me. You know, being a farmer I am partial to Saturday.
Vivian and I went to the dedication of the new Masonic Temple in K.C. last night. The Grand Master and all the big guns were out. The Grand Master always wears a tall plug hat and a large gold jewel on his left breast. When he happens to be a large man he makes a very imposing figure, but a short one or a fat one is funny. The present one is tall and slim. With the high hat he looks to be about seven feet. But he's not as tall as I am when I got up against him last night. The one last year was a G.M. every inch. He was about six feet and weighted over two hundred. He also had a foghorn voice, a young-looking face, and lots of gray hair.
They unwound yards and yards of pink tape last night and it was all very solemn. They always dedicate a Masonic Temple with corn, wine, and oil, and pouring each one on with solemn invocations. This one is the finest in Missouri or almost anywhere in the west. It is a York Rite Temple.
I hope you and all who were with you can come out some Sunday. We are going to have a whole bunch of cousins out here either the fifteenth or twenty-second, I don't know which. If you'd come then, I could assure you something to eat for I'd make each cousin prepare a dish and they are all fair cooks. That is when Ethel and Nellie are coming. We'll sure have a roughhouse then.
You need not worry about our front lawn. There wasn't a scrap on it. You know we rolled up the paper and burned it (that is, we burned it next day), and the wind and chickens took good care of anything else that was left. It didn't look as if you'd been here at all the next morning.
I am glad you like the Orpheum idea. I'll put it into execution the first day I am in. I guess I'll have to change my eyes again. They didn't work worth a cent. I wore an old pair of rimless nose glasses I have last night in preference to the new ones. They nearly pinched my nose off, too. With all that, they don't stay on good. They'll stay on awhile and then they'll begin sliding forward and my head will begin going back until finally I look like a grenadier in Napoleon's armee. The specs fall off and I take a new start and do it all over again.
I cut corn all day yesterday. That's a job that causes a fellow to earn his keep. We don't cut it all by hand, but two rows have to be cut on each shock row. Then we hitch a horse to a machine and cut. I was cutting the first two rows. I scratched my face and wore out my overalls at the knee.
Bankers like men with overalls worn out at the knees and elbows. Uncle Harrison said there was a stranger went into the bank of Lee's Summit in the panic of 1893 and told the cashier he wanted to borrow $400 and he wanted it right away. He got the money and when the president asked the cashier why he let the man have it, he said that the man's knees and elbows were worn out through patches but the seat of his trousers was perfectly good-and he knew he'd be good for $400, and he was.
My cold is nearly gone. I can almost hear a coupling pin fall at three feet on a wooden floor.
Please let me know what you think of going to Pinafore, and then the Miss Macks'. They say DeWolf Hopper and a whole constellation are in the cast.
Please remember you owe me a letter and answer as quickly as you did last time.
Sincerely, Harry