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#2816: Willa Cather to Charles Douglas Cather, May 23, 1938

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My dear Douglass1:

I am sending you by this mail two photographs from the Vermont5 Marble Company which I like better than any which Ed Overing6 submitted. I think the proportions are better than any which Overing sent, except the photograph of the little stone for Grandmother Boak7, which, as I told you8, I think would be very nice indeed if it were considerably enlarged. I really think it a better design than either of the two I am now sending you under another cover.

Of the two I send you, I very much prefer the taller stone, and the marble men tell me that there is no reason why such a stone should ever settle, if it is well placed when it is first set. Most of the low stones look like window seats or clumsy benches. I think Grandmother Boak's stone is an exception; it is low, and yet it has a definite design and some grace. If it could be made twice or three times as high and wide, without being made any thicker, I believe it would work out very well. It is the thickness of most of these low stones that makes them look so brutal. In this letter I think I will return to you the small photographs9 you sent me.

Edith10 was badly hurt in a taxicab collision11 a week ago, and is still in bed. Her cuts are healing up nicely, but the one on her upper lip will leave a scar.

I have never told you how much I enjoy wearing Mother12's little marquise ring which you were kind enough to give me. I had it made smaller, to fit my little finger, and I grow fonder of it all the time.

My dear Douglass, I wish modern grave stones were not so ugly. In that grave yard13 up on Timber Ridge, where [illegible] many of Father's old friends are buried, I saw so many simple stones with graceful lines. They had been there eighty or a hundred years, and I did not see one that had settled or fallen down. Perhaps the fact that there is plenty of solid rock twenty or thirty feet beneath the surface of the ground keeps them solid

My love to you, Doug, and please tell me about that pain in your arm. All I really expected from Dr. Patterson14 was a verdict about your heart15. If he says it is all right, it is. Getting rid of that worry ought to mean a good deal to you, —and it surely means a great deal to me. He tells me it is a perfect heart!

W.
FROM CATHER 570 PARK AVE4., NEW YORK CITY2 Mr. C. D. Cather1, 929 American Avenue, Long Beach3, California. NEW YORK2 MAY 27 11 PM STA [illegible]