Grandview, June 18, 1912
Dear Bess:
I had all kinds of luck getting you over the phone this morning, didn't I? After I got on the car going to Sheffield it struck me that it might be a good day to go on to town and get you to come over, go to lunch, and then take in a half dozen picture shows. Luck was agin me though. I bet I called up six times on the Home and once on the Bell - at Paxton's.
I guess you didn't miss much anyhow though, because you can see pictures a half dozen times a week and they get mighty old when you see them often. I went to the 10th St. It was good I thought. Then I went on a shopping tour all my own. Bought a straw hat and a package of gum. Wasn't it a fine day to buy straw hats? Also I bought an umbrella. Thanks very much for the one you offered me. Wish I'd taken it. I'd have been one simoleon ahead now that is if I had not succeeded in smashing it. I don't believe I was even polite when you offered it. It was accident and not intention.
Have Frank and George arisen yet? You'd better not inform them that I made that inquiry. It might create a misunderstanding. I'd give (I was going to say $40.00) I'll say 90 cents (which I can) if I could go to bed once and absolutely know that nothing ought to be done and that no one could take it on himself to awaken me. I bet I'd go straight through for two days. I had an opportunity to do that last year and do you know that from some unknown cause I always awoke at daylight and was dead anxious to get up? Why are people built on the contrary principle anyway.
I do wish you could have gone to lunch with me. I had a very dull day of it. After I found you couldn't go or rather found that I couldn't get you I went to see if Myra could go. She had brought her lunch and wouldn't. Wasn't that onery? So I didn't go at all. Even when Boxby asked me. I wasn't hungry so what was the use. I told Mary I'd asked you to go to her recital next Saturday and she very kindly informed me that I am a week previous. It doesn't happen until June 29. I think its 29th anyway into the Saturday after next. Can you go then? I hope you can. You know all these girls like to tell of the crowds they can inveigle to hear them, so I hope you haven't a date for that evening, nor for next Sunday evening.
Your last letter was a most excellent one (they all are), but it was very injurious to my head. A thirty-two-inch belt would hardly buckle around it after what you said about my eligibility. I don't care what the balance think if you'll only think so yourself.
I have an invitation from Belton Lodge to come up there Tuesday and confer a Third Degree. Mary gave me one to go with her to town that day also and invest in a dress for her. I think I'll go the other way, although I won't have any peace until the thing is bought. I guess she deserves it because she is making her last year's suit work again this summer. I'm a pretty good buyer of feminine wearing apparel by this. Mamma entrusts hers to me (and Mary takes me along and pretends to go by my judgment). Mary Paxton told me her show was to be next Friday. Hope she'll postpone it. I'd like to see it very much. But I have to have a show of my own that day.
I hope you'll consider this worth as much as two sheets and as many more as you care to fill.
Most sincerely, Harry