COLUMBIA NO PLACE TO GO TO SCHOOL
June 8, 1934
Hon. Frank L. Littleton, Atty.
Big Four Building
Indianapolis, Indiana
Dear Sir, I have just returned from New York and Joan's graduation in Columbia. . . My Gosh, but that is a big school! On Tuesday they gave out between 4,000 and 5,000 diplomas. Had the exercises outdoors in front of the library. Must have been 15,000 or 20,000 or more people there. The crowd looked a bit like the Speedway races. . . Between my seat on some bleachers and where the diplomas were given out were numerous flights of steps, a sort of sunken garden, some four or five tennis courts, a wide blocked-off street, and a football field the short way. And between were the graduates and visitors, in camp chairs and on bleachers as thick as they could be packed. They had loud speakers, but not enough of them for me to hear from the seat I occupied. It took over an hour for the graduates and faculty to march in from four entrances. There surely must be over a thousand in the faculty. Anyway, I made up my mind then and there that Columbia was no place for an undergraduate to go to school. It is too big. The students have practically no campus life. A great part of them are from the City of New York and surrounding cities, and they room all the way from the Battery to the Bronx. Endless numbers of them never see or know one another. . . As Ever,
RICHARD FAIRFAX—A BULL STORY WITHOUT PEER
July 20, 1936
Mr. B.C. Byers
Macatawa, Mich.
My dear Mr. Byers: I haven't been in Indianapolis since I started the two little girls up into Maine to a girls camp, so unless I succeed in cooking up something, this letter will be a fizzle for news.
In May I bought a 16-months old Hereford bull, Hugh Fairfax by name, at the McCray Sale at Kentland. Since that time I bought a McCray-bred Fairfax Hereford bull from a Mr. Dillman at Waveland, and also traded an old Woodford Hereford bull to the Indiana State Farm for another McCray-bred Fairfax Hereford. So you see I am slightly in the bull business.
For your information, you knowing nothing about anything except railroading and good looking women, Mr. Warren T. McCray got his big start in Herefords after he acquired Perfection Fairfax, a Hereford bull that afterwards won the International Championship, and was acknowledged generally to be the greatest sire of his day. He started the "Fairfax" fashion.
In getting the pedigrees of these last two bulls straightened out, I made four trips to Kentland. The trip prior to the last one found the ex-Governor in a petulant frame of mind. He called me "Senator" very formally, was easily irritated and gave this and that as an excuse for the delay. The truth is, I think, that his herd books have been kept in about the same condition as Joe C— kept his desk in the Senate Chamber.
But my last trip was different. When I got there the old boy was in his office selling a Hereford to some young fellow from the north part of the state—I hope Lake County, because anybody from Lake County needs a trimming. I stayed outside and eventually they came out.