Grandview, Mo. May 30, 1912
Dear Bess:
Ten-thirty P.M. and I'm going to answer your letter. I've succeeded in packing Mary and Nellie off to bed and now maybe I can have some peace. Nellie got your letter this morning and I almost choked her to death before I succeeded in getting it. Nellie said she was going home tomorrow evening but I went up and called Ethel up and made her promise to come out Saturday evening and now Nellie says she'll stay till Sunday. Luella has invited us all down there for Saturday evening to go fishing and if Ethel doesn't come I'm going to extract her back hair in handful at a time. One or the other of them has had bad luck every single time they've come out. Ethel has a school entertainment on.
I have been plowing corn, have enough to run me the balance of the week. Then I'm going to put up hay, then plow again and still some more, then probably put up the wheat, or, harvest it would be the proper way to say it. I hope you get to go to Platte County and will let me come to see you while there. I can then forget any jobs I may have on hand.
Do you know I've put in a whole day and a half getting my court in shape? It is pretty good for a rube affair. I guess at a pinch a person could play tennis on it. I'm going to keep fiddling with it until it gets in shape. I don't suppose I'll ever get to use it myself. I'm always up to my neck in work every time it is ready, and when it rains it's too muddy. I don't care whether I ever get to use it or not because I'd never make a shining light as a tennis player, but I don't begrudge the labor I put on it if it helps keep anybody that comes amused. Farmers ought really to have such things and if they'd spend more time on recreation and brain development and less eating and whittling to a lie accompaniment, they'd be much better off. Most of them, you know, eat like hogs and spend quite a bit of time at the stores swapping prevarications. They'll ship a load of hogs or cattle and spend enough of the proceeds on booze to buy the whole family a good time at some brain-developing show. Then they'll beef around worse than if they'd been sold a gold brick if their wives want a few dollars for a church fair. I can't see why men are so constituted. To preach hard times and retrenchment at home and then be a good fellow among the boozers.
This one is worse than the other, isn't it? It's not quite so personally offensive anyway. I guess you won't get over the fact that I'm averse to Liz will you? Well, if they called you that I'd forget the rest and like it. Now, does that please you enough to forget the other one?
I guess you are very glad Frank is back. I'd like to see him and hear his opinion of Panama. I'm sure his trip must have done him good even if he is out some money he's still ahead. I wish I could take the trip.
I don't understand why you can't make "kisses." It seems to me that they are very easily put up. Maybe I have the wrong kind in mind. I think I'd be a fair judge of either kind. You might try and see.
I'm just dying to see Weber and Fields and I want to ask you to go so badly I don't know what to do, but I know I simply cannot leave. I hope you get to go. If it rains Wednesday and you should happen to be at home and I could think up some excellent reason to leave, would you go? If you get a chance to go, don't count this because I am sure Wednesday will be an ideal June day. Please remember though that this is my busiest busy season, and since I laid off all last summer and the crops failed besides I must work to make up. You know when a person is not blest with plenty of change he's got to work like the tarnation bowwows to get it. That simile is like the one I heard the other day. A fellow said it rained at his place harder than seven hundred dollars. I wish Weber and Fields would come when there is snow on the ground anyway.
I sincerely hope you'll consider this worth an answer, and will send it immediately.
Most sincerely, Harry, without any alias so far as he knows.