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#2217: Willa Cather to Roscoe Cather, May 13 [1944]

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ My dear Brother1

What a precious letter came from you last night! I am so glad that this "publicity" amuses and pleases you. It was all news to me—(I take no periodicals, never turn on the radio except for Churchill6.) So Life7 has dug up some of the pictures of Col. Harvey's8 party9! I was teaching in the Pittsburgh10 High School11 then. Paul's Case12 had been published in "McClures13", and somebody told Col. Harvey I had a future. A kind Pittsburgh woman took my classes at the High School for four days to enable me to come to New York2 for the party, and she loaned me fifty dollars to have a good dress-maker make the dress in which I appear. (I had money in bank, but wouldn't use it for anything so frivolous.)

Yes, I was young then. I hit the road pretty early and worked terribly hard. I was never conceited, thank God, and never very hopeful. I expected to teach hard all my life in order to get time to write just a little. I did not complain, because everything interested me, even teaching. Now I have to avoid being much interested—it simply uses me up. That is the natural result.

Well, father14 and mother15 both got something out of it, and you have always seen that there was something in it, ever since that hot afternoon in the "rose bower"16 when I first read "Grandmither"17 to you.

I have three suit cases of letters from the wise and the great, but none of them are so from J.M.Barrie18, Thomas Hardy19 among them, but none are so precious as this one from father. I have never shown it to anyone before.

Lovingly Willie
FROM CATHER 570 PARK AVE.3, NEW YORK CITY2 Mr. R. C. Cather1 First Savings Bank of Colusa Colusa4 California NEW YORK STA. Y5 MAY 15 1944 1:30 PM