Hotel Robidoux, St. Joseph, Mo. Sunday, May 7, 1933
Dear Bess:
This has been a very dull Sunday. I came up here last night to a Legion affair and stayed all night and I'm still here at noon. It was a good party but I had to leave it. As usual they got too rough and I'm still in politics. I was supposed to go to the Lake of the Ozarks yesterday with Neild, Boxley and Luzier, but Neild had to go home so that party was called off. I went out to the farm and had dinner and the phone began its usual tattoo and I came up here. I'll leave for the farm in a few minutes because the room at home had wet paint on the floor.
Tomorrow I'll be forty-nine and for all the good I've done the forty might as well be left off. Take it all together though the experience has been worthwhile, I'd like to do it again. I've been in a railroad, bank, farm, war, politics, love (only once and it still sticks), been busted and still am and yet I have stayed an idealist. I still believe that my sweetheart is the ideal woman and that my daughter is her duplicate. I think that for all the horrors of war it still makes a man if he's one to start with. Politics should make a thief, a rou?, and a pessimist of anyone, but I don't believe I'm any of them and if I can get the Kansas City courthouse done without scandal no other judge will have done as much, and then maybe I can retire as collector and you and the young lady can take some European and South American tours when they'll do you most good; or maybe go to live in Washington and see all the greats and near greats in action. We'll see. I'm counting the days till I see you.
Lots of love to you both, Harry