Wenonah, N.J.,
April 13, 1925.
Dear Cousins:
Who cares whether I begin housecleaning next week or finished last week? Whether our garden is up or not plowed yet? My first thought was that since so little of real interest has happened in our family this year my mite might detract rather than add to the general pleasure of reading the Correspondence Book. But if Cousin Will Selph can be patient in jogging our memory, surely I am chagrined at the thought of being a "ditcher"1, and certainly I am no "conscientious objector" to such a splendid idea as the Correspondence Club.
I recently spent three weeks in Watkins with Mother. It had been a year and a half since I had been there, so it was quite a treat. I saw very few relatives; in fact Aunt Grace Carey and Ruth Mandeville were all I did see. I had hoped to see Pearl Wise, but she "inadvertantly" [sic] decided to have her appendix removed at just that time, so we missed each other.
The past year with us has been generally uneventful. To some of you the great sorrow of death has come. How well we know how to sympathize with you and the meaning of your heartache! Not every year has treated us so kindly.
We thoroughly enjoyed our first attendance at the Cousins Dinner last fall when everything was so gorgeous in its autumn dress. Uncle Ed's and Aunt Em's much too brief visit with us is like a dream.
Last week we attended the launching of the airplane carrier, Saratoga2. I was going to say we fortunately were given tickets, but when you know that about thirty thousand others had tickets, the fortune seems more casual. However, it was a wonderful sight to watch that giant ship, nearly seven hundred feet long, slide down the incline into the water. It is a marvel how man could devise ways and means to handle something like thirty thousand tons as easily as if it were a toy. In place of the customary champagne of pre-Volstead3 days, mineral water was used for the christening.
May we not hope to see some of you this summer? It is hardly probable that we shall be able to attend the reunion this year, much as we should like to do so.
To each of you and yours we wish a full measure of success, health and happiness during the coming year.
With kindest regards to all,
1. I. e. someone who joins in making plans with a group, then, at the last minute, "ditches" them and does not participate.
2. The "father" of sea planes, naval aviation, and aircraft carriers (among other things) was Glenn Hammond Curtiss. He's in our family tree because he is "connected" to us, even though he is not a Campbell, Lugg, Blackwell or Hammond "by blood." His mother, Lua A. Andrews, was a granddaughter of Harvey Andrews (1801 - 1868) by his first wife, Elizabeth Bradey. Harvey's 2nd wife, by whom he had 3 children, was Jane Hazlett.
3. "The Volstead Act" was the commonly used name for 1919's "National Prohibition Act", which put into law the 18th Amendment..
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