Monday P.M.
Sept. 22, 1924

Dear Walter:

Thelma, Bob and the children have just left, so I want to have a few minutes conversation with you. I wish it could be several hours real conversation instead of one with pen and ink.

Your account of the fishing trip was interesting, and I know you had a good time. Yes, I would have enjoyed it the best in the world, and I appreciate your thinking of me. That makes me feel good even though I couldn’t be there. I know I’d just love to be down in Florida, and would be a mighty happy girl if I loved you. Guess I’ll know some day whether I do or don’t. There isn’t a doubt in my mind about your being good and kind and considerate because I feel sure that such is your disposition. If I find that I do love you, I feel perfectly sure that you can make me happy, and I will try my very best to make you just as happy. I appreciate your love more than I can tell you, and I hope I shall never be guilty of doing anything that would show lack of appreciation.

We had an inch of rain last night. Can you imagine such a thing? It has been terribly hot for the past few days, but has been so cool and pleasant today. Everyone seems to feel so much better. I hope you have had enough rain to make your work better.

No, up until a few days ago when Mr. Parman was here, he hadn’t heard a word from Mr. Bishopp, and had no idea about who was to take his place while he was on his vacation. He doesn’t know why Mr. Bishopp doesn’t write. However, he says now that he can’t get as long a vacation as he had hoped to get, so he and Mrs. Parman are going to leave here the last of this month, going by rail instead of in their car since he can be gone only two weeks. I am very much disappointed that it looks like you can’t come this time, but maybe it’s all for the best. I try to look at things that way, and I usually find sooner or later, that it all …

The remainder of the letter is missing. I just found the final leaf misfiled with the letters from July 1925. Here it is:

works out right after all. If we do our best and have faith I feel sure it will.

I am glad you liked the pictures, and I appreciate the nice things you, the nurse, and your landlady said about them. I don’t feel a bit badly that the landlady insisted that I was Irish. I am afraid though that I can’t boast of any Irish blood. As far as the temper is concerned, I must have “lost” most of mine when I was a baby, because I only have fragments of it left. I sometimes wish I had more. Some people seem to get so much satisfaction out of “flying off the handle,” that I believe it woiuld help my feelings a little sometimes if I could do it.

I am sorry your work didn’t come out just like you expected. I know you were disappointed, but you shouldn’t be discouraged, because you have spent a comparatively short time on that particular thing, while others have spent years without satisfactory results, so you really couldn’t expect to solve it all in two or three months. I feel that you will solve it sometime if they will let you continue working on it.

We are getting a little busier every day at the office. We have about six thousand tax receipts to write which are supposed to be finished by the first of October, so you can see that we will not have much idle time. You see, after the 1924 tax rolls are made, we have to write up each person’s receipt, now describing his property, and then, when he comes in to pay his taxes, all we will have to do will be to date and sign the receipt, and take the money. If we waited until tax-paying season, which begins October first, to write the receipts, it would be practically an impossibility to handle the crowd. It takes a long time, you know, to describe every tract of land in Uvalde County.

It is getting late and so I had better get some sleep.

Remember that I enjoy your letters lots & lots.

Sincerely,

Ina