July 21, 1932
S. L. C., Utah

Dear Ellsworth-

Very admirable the way I've been holding my end of the correspondence isn't it? Listen, old dear, if I could write a sensible and interesting letter I'd have sent it before now. In fact I have two long ones written, besides a page of verse that have never reached the mailbox yet and likely never will.

 You see by the writing on the envelope that it was addressed at another time. It was intended for a letter I wrote Sun. 17th.

I decided, that in order to put you wise ^{to the fact} that I didn't go north to visit the eskimos, I should get a letter off toot de suite. Somehow I just couldn't imagine being so far away from home for an indefinite time, even tho it's much like home up there. I'd hate to be missing events that may transpire here in my absence - they might harness me to my old job as show card writer and refuse to give me up again so all in all, I decided it best to stay in my own door yard, until some time when I have a chaperon to go along.

Oliver and Don are away on scout camp this week at Timpanogos Mt. Things seem very quiet without them.

I have been staying pretty close to home, myself, sewing and printing. I've made a couple of new dresses and a pair of day pyjamas. This enterprise constitutes the first real sewing I've every done entirely on my own hook and I'm pretty proud of the way they turned out. It's about time I learned to sew if I'm going to have a family of 16 kids (ha ha!)

Well I guess Trudy is in Cardston now, so if you ever want to write her, that is all the address you will need, with the addition of Alberta the province. 

Old N.D.A. is flourishing so rapidly I can't keep track of all that's going on. I haven't been to theri weekly meetings for sometime, and last Sat, one of the young fellows who was taking charge that nite sent me a special invitation as he wanted to call on me to speak. Then on went the damper and home I stayed. Gosh I didn't want to ruin the "rep" my Dad has made in the organization by getting up and proving what a DUMB speaker his eldest daughter is. 

You oughta be here on the 29th of this month. The N.D.A. members are having a  dance at Rotary Club in Memory Grove, with coupons for admission. Coupons, coupons everywhere, gee we don't need silver for anything except electricity and gas and it's a lucky thing we don't or we'd have to go sans. We have a dancing instructor now and so I might even yet change my vocation, and go on the stage. 

To change the subject, remind me when I see you to tell you of a course I've been taking. I think some of the material will interest you, and it will give us something to talk about that we are both interested in.

Jimminies! I just finished reading those two long letters of the 14th and 17th and 19th and I'm almost feeling down in the dumps myself. Why all the fuss about my not writing for a few days? I thot that if I gave you the impression that I would probably go to Canada, and leave you without further information for a short time, you would feel a temporary relief and relaxation from the tension I have caused you. Instead you get all melancholy and doubting and retrospective. Have I spoiled you by writing too often and shall I cut off my hand and send it so that you may hold it constantly? By jove, I think I'll open a printing press and issue you a doily manuscript. Then you would soon be cured.

I have little enough news to send, writing as seldom as I do now. Then too, you know that a new sore hurts more than an older one and when you first left it was similarly hard to adjust myself to my new conditions and environment. Now I work harder and dream less, for dreaming doesn't get my anywhere.

Now I realize how crude a stab I made in that lineup of paints on characteristics of my friends. You would oblige me by destroying it - please! Understand that it was necessarily mostly guess work and people are seldom as perfect at that age as I raked some of them. I'm but a poor judge in the long run ^{at best} as I can only judge from my own qualities.

According to your rating of me I could change a few also: 

Now who wears the biggest hat? Yes my ego is very well developed if my brains aren't, but without it to compensate for my many weaknesses I'd be a lonely individual. On your personal rating how to do you get 10 on Outlook on Marriage and Life with only 8 for Rel. Insight? Isn't that part of it to you? Oh I'm only fooling I need reforming so badly I almost need a private cell and here I have the nerve to make over the  potentialities of others far superior. Take it all back and cross my own out.

Gerks, I've got to cut out this cynical attitude or my temperament rating will drop to 4 pts. I'll go take a mouth wash.

4 P.M.

The folks tried to jerk me off to a funeral at Murray but I made them drop me off at Stringhams to visit with the 16 yr. old daughter. We are mapping out an overnight camp for the 24 and 25th.

We may start dancing lessons together next week, and if I can get a Sp. guitar I'm going to take lessons and play duets with her on her Hawaiian guitar.

It's a wonderful old world Ellsworth but sometimes we get mighty lonesome for our nearest friends who are far from us in body.

Is it true that I must give up looking for you to come to S.L. this summer? I have been keeping it as a secret hope, back in my mind and now I'll have to reconcile myself to the reverse, much as I have imagined and dreamed about it. Nevertheless I think you would be further ahead if you didn't leave your work for any harem-scarem fancies until you are ready to return to school. Think how disappointing a trip it would be if we should quarrel while you were here. Sometimes I feel like capsizing the sofa for want of romance but I think how many others are in the same fix. Wasting all these beautiful moonlit nights seems a crime (since I'm Scotch) but anyway that isn't the worst predicament that could face me.

6:30 P.M.

Seems like I'll never be let along long enough to finish this letter but I'm going to persist to the  bloody end because it's going to be mailed tonite on my way down town.

You're a patient being to wait so long for a litter, and what's more you'll be a tolerant one if you can overlook this poor excuse for one.

Say would you relish a good laugh right now? You should get a quint at Virgil. he's been out to his cousins playing at 25th So., and while romping around fell splash in a ditch. He exchanged his clothes for a sleeveless white shirt and a darling pair of fancy-cut overalls, with one short leg & a huge hold in the other leg knee. He looks like Huck Finn in his tender years - but Virgil doesn't feel quite accustomed to the role. He is in the front yard, being coaxes to go to his friend's house or two away but he's so conscious of his attire he doesn't move on to the sidewalk. Well I should smile! He took a crouching start when no one was looking & hit the high spats so he must have got there.

I won't pretend to bore you any further - really I almost feel lost without your letters & don't know where to begin & where to end - as you say. You are a sprouting Frenchman, I'll be looking for a curled mustache on your upper l ip when I see you and perhaps a (goatee). But oui, make it black. Sincerement, 

Dorothea