The main idea is to be tolerant. That is the greatest thing in the world, tolerance. I may not care to smoke cigarettes myself or drink cocktails and highballs, but if another girl does it it's none of my business. That is the foundation of the unconventional and intellectual world—freedom and tolerance of other people's opinions and behaviour. That is democracy!
As for the futurists and symbolists of various schools, I am not narrow enough, I hope, to ridicule them or deny them the right to self-expression, but I am not in sympathy with them. However, it is most interesting to listen to their views.
Well, these delightful treats are rare events in my horridly busy life. I'm in the infirmary and the hospital almost all the time; I'm always on duty or studying or attending lectures and clinics. I don't faint any more. And the poor little sufferers fill my heart with sympathy. I do love children—even defective ones. It makes me furious that there should be any. We must regulate this some day. And regulate birth control, too.
It is interesting; I am rather glad that I shall have had this experience. As a graduate nurse, some day, I shall add immensely to my own self-respect and self-confidence. But I should never pursue the profession further; never study medicine; never desire to become a professional physician. The minute I graduate I shall rent a studio and start in to find out what most properly shall be my vehicle for self-expression.
I forgot to tell you that Oswald Grismer's father and mother are dead within a week of each other. Pneumonia! Poor boy, he is stunned. He wrote me. He won't give any every second to creative work without a thought of financial gain.
Harry Belter is such a funny, fat man. He asks after you every time I meet him. I sent you some of his cartoons in the Star. Badger Spink is an odd sort of man with his big, boyish figure and his mass of pompadour hair and his inextinguishable energy and amazing talent. He draws, draws, draws all the time; you see his pictures in every periodical; yet he seems to have time for all sorts of gaiety, private theatricals, dances, entertainments. He belongs to tie Players, the Ten Cent Club, the Dutch Treat, Illustrators, Lotus, Coffee House, Two by Four—and about a hundred others—and I think he's president of most of them. He always sends his regards to you and requests to know whether you're not yet fed up with Latin Quarter stuff—whatever that means!
And Clarence Verne always mentions you. Such a curious man with a face like Pharaoh, and Egyptian hands, too, deeply cut in between thumb and forefinger like the hands of people sculptured in bas reliefs on Egyptian tombs.
But such lovely girls he paints!—so exquisite! He is a very odd man—with a fixed gaze, and speaks as though he were a trifle deaf—or drugged, or something....
You haven't said much about yourself, Jim, in your last letters; and also your letters arrive at longer and longer intervals.
Somehow, I think that you are becoming reconciled to Paris. I don't believe you feel very lonely any longer. But what do you do to amuse yourself after your hours of work are ended? And who are your new friends over there? For, of course, you must have made new friends—I don't mean the students whose names you have occasionally mentioned. Haven't you met any nice girls?