CATT, Carrie CHAPMAN GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE Peck, Mary Gray 1919-20 Sunday Eve Apr 13, 1919 My dear Mary: When I returned from St. Louis last Saturday evening - just eight days ago. I found two things - a can of maple syrup and a pile of international mail spelling turmoil and world war continued among the women now that the men have quit. It took all day Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to settle it, altho' in the interims I engaged movers, rug cleaners &c. On Wednesday I went to [the] Phila to the State convention and returned Thursday evening. Friday I spent a busy day at the office and Saturday I spent the morning with more movers and their adjuncts and in the afternoon I went farm hunting. We visited five and I came home sore all over but I slept the sleep of the just I dreamed of babbling brooks and today we have been out again to see the one where the brook babbled the nicest I am in love with it It is a farm of alleged seventeen acres, all in stony terraces but it [is] has some old apple trees, very picturesque but probably of no other value it is isolated, quiet restful and gives promise of fun. I'm bound to get it if I can, but before I do, I shall make sure of a man to work it. There isn't much, if any, local land but some approximates it. God designed it for tired nerves and not profit. Now Mary Jane, here you come in I scorn your love letter just received as evidence of idle brain and sore throat. Work, mental occupation is the cure and here is the prescription. I'm in dead earnest too. It is a long time since I had a garden and I never knew N.Y. farming as my brand was trained in Iowa, so there are lots of things I want to know. Are not fruit trees planted in the autumn? If so when? I imagine it to be too late for the spring anyway. Tel me the names of all the bulbous things that do well here in N Y. They are planted in the fall too. aren't they or is it possible to put some in now? When may currants, raspberries etc be put out fall or spring. If the autumn is the time for all of these, there is no need for rushing your instructions but do rush the answers to the following: What annuals (flowers) are to be recommended for first year of an amateur. I think I should not spread myself too much til I get acquainted with the place and can lay out a proper flower garden. I do want some show of color though. This ought to be in your chief domain. Had you not written those descriptions of your garden, I should never had rushed into this mad extravagance, therefore it is really incumbent upon you to help me out. Tell me about shrubs also. 2 More. I want 2 chickens. What variety shall I have? I expect to have a cow if I can find anyone to milk her. It wont be MGH. I think I'll elect her to bring in the eggs. I shall water and hoe the garden, chop wood(I don't have to come to Geura) and make a grand park through my woods, - and sit by my brook. I have three. I presume they all dry up in the summer and I'll have to do my own babbling. I didn't see any maple trees - certainly not enough to make a sugar camp. We have agreed not to open the can until we have moved but we are all mighty grateful. (M.G.H. doesn't like maple - she's from Indiany and prefers sorghum. You have been ordered to send no more gifts. and your cousin told me you had given me the reputation of liking good things to eat. Well. I do. but for a stranger to learn that is pretty mean of you. I got a wonderful cake once out of her pantry it seems, so some sort of excuse had to be given her, I suppose. Now that I am likely to have a farm, I shall have all sought to how to eat and gifts are to cease! Did you hear? After this your favors are to be confined to advice on farming. Perhaps you could tell me whether cows can be trusted on N Y. hills not to break their legs, or is it customary to hang there over the ledge to browse by ropes? I've been thinking goats would work better. Do you recommend sheep in the place of lawn mowers? If you [did?] remember where to get a wet nurse for the lambkins. All this doesn't sound like Europe does it. Well I may go over in May, but not if I can help it. The Int Board will probably meet in Sept. and I doubt if there will be a Congress before next year. There will then be a new president, for some how or other, I'm going to get out this year. When I know more, I'll tell you. Any way, there is a farm in my eye. The haste is this. We cannot get all our duds into the new apartment and if some are going to a farm. I want them to go now and we will move (us about 10 days) to both places at once! Meantime we are pretty busy. Mrs. Brooks Chief of the Womens Values is here and we are getting out some material for it. Therefore dear Mary, please accept my bestest thanks for the can of the very choicest of nature's sweets and for all the many many kind generous things you have done for me. You have never done anything except one of which I did not approve - the love letters. Send farm lore here after. When will the nurseryman have my Deacon Ezeas ready. When the farm is mine, you may give him my address and he can deal with me direct. Or you might tell me names of varieties of pears, plums, cherries and peaches that do well in N.Y. if you know. There is a nurseryman near, but I don't want to appear too eager yet. I'm as excited as was Paris when the Germans were 60 miles away! Lovingly, C. C. C. Apr. 23 1919 Mr dear Mary: That was a fine letter and box of seed Miss Hay being in politics had some garden seeds and a few flowers presented without solicitation by her Congressman. We had to have a farm to utilize them! Now I've checked on your list all we have had given us - you and the Congressman - and I've written an order to Burpee for all the rest of the annuals - or nearly all. The letter goes tomorrow if the contract gets signed. I do not know what is on the place but there are some things and I'm going slow this year until I get acquainted with it. I did not dream that Deacon Ezra was so slow moving . Now, heres a suggestion. I've discovered some young trees - probably two to four years old. Why not graft the Deacon on a standing growing tree and thus gain a little time over nature. If we don't it is clear that I shall meet the Deacon in Heaven before I eat one of his apples. I do not know what varieties the young ones are. They tell me the old ones are mainly Baldwins-the poorest excuse for an apple I know. The trees must be 5 yrs old-or more. They have a tough time to stick it out in that soil and they have been neglected, but for some years now, they have had their prescribed baths. They have already had their dormants this year. I cannot get the owners out as soon as I wish but I think it is a go. It is a nice place to play and spend money on, but I cannot 3 see that there is any hope of ever getting anything back, but it is near enough New York so that it could be rented to a family hungry for the country -or it can be closed up and will take no harm. The problem is probably poor soil- it will prove poor enough, but I shall know more later. When it is really mine, I shall let you know and shall expect periodic letters of advice. At present, spring gardening will be a fruitful subject. The [plantations] will come in the autumn when I learn where the [need] things will do best. Meanwhile, we are packing and I am so stiff. I can take no interest in getting up when I am once down. We shall formally move on the 26th but we are doing it by dribbles now and it is all so overwhelming in its importance that nothing else in the universe counts at present. I am glad you like my farm project - I knew you would. I am not sure that anyone else will. I shall send you a message soon to tell you whether I am a farmerette or a reformer. Lovingly, Carrie C. Catt CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT [2 WEST 66th ST.] 404 Riverside Drive NEW YORK May 6, 1919 My dear Mary: I read that the 17 year locusts are coming! Just my luck!! Well, Ezra and Hawley were grafted amid appropriate ceremonies; one was done as they do it in Portugal and the other as they do it in Austria with a good deal of American advice. The tree were the poorest little specimens, having had hard work to hold on in that soil and more they were in full leaf - all that was abnormal. It looks now as though Ezra died at once of sheer disgust at his circumstances, but Hawley is giving a hint of throwing out an inquisitional bud. After all your pains, it will be distressing if nothing happens except the death of two trees in their early youth. I am still in love with my farm, but the soil is simply impossible. Perhaps if I could get a corner on manure, I might make a few flowers bloom, but since I have no such wealth, I fear I may never have a decent flower bed. I see that I couldn't even make plans this year. However, I have a cow and she is even now desecrating the landscape. When I find a place to get them I shall set my hennery going. Meantime I am making a deal (or I hope I am) to build a little house for the chauffeur and a sleeping porch. The rest doesn't matter We are still in a terrible state of chaos here, chiefly because people to do things are so difficult to find. Apparently Clara has told you she proposes to leave me. I suppose she has also told you that M G H and Clara do not love each other. Each one is rather ready to lay causes at the others door and each is irritated because I take the others part. They are both very unhappy because of the other and my own position is so queer that I presume I act strangly and make it harder for both. I have tried to adjust the matter by keeping them apart as much as possible, but it is not always possible and often it is very inconvenient. I do not in the least blame Clara for finding her yoke he[?]e tp bear. She has spoken of its unbearableness before, but I have always begged her to stay. This time she seemed to have made up her mind finally. She agreed to see me through my moving and I have not mentioned it since. My reason for silence is that her very best friend told me before she came to me that she never remained long in one place and that it was always she who made the change. Remembering that and that she has occasional moods of mutual disturbance (I do not know whether they are occasioned by anger, depression soul yearning or stomach ache) I had dared to hope her decision was the result of one of these moods and might pass. I have a theory that the habit of concentration on our job is so unnatural to the CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT 2 WEST 86th ST. NEW YORK developing animal that its monotony creates brain stories in all of us. This desire or instinct to get out of the treadmill makes men drink and swear and women buy hobble skirts and paint their faces. Cara's moods are only those of her fellow men and women. She is as even tempered, as sunny, as aplumstic and all the way around devoted as any creature God ever made, but she yearns for something different, something better just as we all do. She has been a veritable right leg and arm and I could not have survived these past five years without her. nor can I go on without her. There is no one else who can take her place, but I have no right to interfere with her hopes and ambitions, when they run counter to mine. I do not want her to go now or ever. she knows that. I shall have to find a bookkeeper (to keep myself out of a Federal Court) and all the rest will have to be thrown overboard. I will follow as soon as I can and let someone with better facilities for keeping the peace have my dear little job I do wish you could persuade her to stay till the next convention is over (Feb 14) and then let go too. I have a lease here for two years. I shall spend these two years in preparing to shuffle off my belongings so that they will never trouble me again at moving time. Have I anything you want? I'll send it on in October 1921. Can bad soil be made good? If so how!? Everything grows stunted and junipers are the [?] growth. Indeed Juniper Ledge is the name the predecessor gave the place. We think of calling it Brookhurst. Hurst is Dutch for [forest] I believe, and as the [forest] is gone and the brook may dry up the name would have pleasant memories of what had been. How do you like it? Of course the thing must [have] a name in Westchester Co! I have a feeling that it is plebeian to change it and the the real aristocrat would stuck to Juniper whatever happened. I wish suffrage [was as?] [???gy] this summer so I could play! Lovingly Carrie C Catt CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT 2 WEST 86TH ST NEW YORK May 8, 1919 Thursday Eve. My dear farmer Mary: I found your letter awaiting me tonight and as your advice and guidance in matters agricultural is truthfully invaluable, I will give you the data so that you can diagnose the situation. This morning I went down to Wall St and got the deed for my farm so it is really mine. The purchase price was $32,000 of which I assumed an [$8000?] mtge and paid the rest. For this I got something over 16 acres of land; an artisan well with water pumped by a wind mil and distributed to house and barn; a barn on a hill with a [corraled?] horse barn opening on a lower level and the carriage part does nicely for a garage; and a house. All the buildings are in harmony of design. The lower part, chimney, supports of porch & [c?] are of cobble stone, the upper part of brown shingles. There is a living room, dining room very small library, an especially fine kitchen and pantry. On the upper floor, there are four "master" bedrooms (all small) and two bathrooms [with?] [?maids] rooms and another bathroom. The third floor is a wonderful attic. It is a livable homey place without any outstanding features. It is provided with electric lights and telephone, furnace, hot water &c. I am going to have a little house built for the chauffeur and the builder says the house is exceedingly well built and that it could not be built now for less than 22,000 and the other buildings and well would be at the least $6,000 more. Therefore the land is pretty nearly [?] us. It consists of a ledge only which [was] is bounded on one side by a very old road leading from Chappaqua to Sing Sing. Then a state road was put in and meanwhile the whole section had been broken up in small holdings so it is now bounded on the other side by a state road. This is a picture [*sketch*] CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT 2 WEST 66th ST. NEW YORK The horizontal lines indicate approximately the edge of the ledge as it drops off to a lower one. The farm is composed in general of three natural ledges or terraces. There are outcroppings of rock most anywhere and the only arable land is found in little pockets here and there. No human can say how much there is. The soil is unlike any I ever met. It certainly isn't loam, nor clay, nor sand. It is a feeble imitation of all three with plenty of rock in it. The best proof of its poverty is found in the stunted growth of everything around. There is no flowerbed at all, but some space has been given to flowers close to the house. I shall stick my seeds in the vegetable garden this year and try to have a real one next year but it can never be prolific. As a matter of fact had this been productive land, it would have been a marked garden or had it had very featurable scenic qualities the multis would have had it. The chief attraction of the house is a wide low brick porch across the end. At present it looks out on this: [*sketch*] No 1 I am thinking of making it like this [* sketch*]+[?] fruit trees, altho' I do not if they will grow. I doubt if much of the pleasure of gardening will be there as I am sure that every effort will prove disappointing but I'll tell you what I can have - a rock garden. Here is the place for it [*sketch*] Probably by the time I've tried to garden and failed I'll be ready to sell if sell I can. The place is covered with junipers. All directions say fill the holes with rich top soil and rotten manure. Well there is no soil top or bottom and men are hired at high prices to carry pails around to catch the precious offal as it drops Where the stuff that goes into a cow is so poor as that grown in Westchester Co. the stuff which comes out cannot enrich a very large space. My man is not a gardener - he is an illiterate Portuguese by profession and incidentally works on my farm. Don't expect me to get wisdom from him. I get it from you and pass it on to him This is a full and complete description of "Juniper Ledge". It is mine for better or worse. Lovingly Carrie C Catt on, and make a living at as long as the public will tolerate the cartoons & your wit. A contribution from Clay. Cross Section of plantation of an anemone bulb by order M 9 Peck Juniper Lodge May 20,'19 [*annotated sketch: So did I; and brought the family Hurry up anem; I'm waiting Gee here is a square meal Heard something was coming up here. + Bulb 1 Stones of various sizes Angle worms 2 Wire worms 3 Cut worms 4 Waiting bugs [Diagram of garden] Carrie Chapman Catt 404 Riverside Drive New York Mon Sept 7, 19 Dear Mary: For a change it is raining and I cannot get out to gather the bushel or so of tomatoes asking to be canned. Mrs Shuler bought one for her dinner and paid 7cts for it--they are precious! I hereby acknowledge seven letters and parcels all agreeably acceptable--except a few intervening about love making which I understand only occur when lucidity leaves you for a moment. I am especially grateful for the lesson in budding which is superbly clear--but I've learned a thing or two since I saw you. I shall take up all the young trees and throw them away and get a few new trees this fall. The place can accommodate very few. I've now search it all over and it can reveal no more secrets. There are a few several pockets o of soil which have not been utilized but they are small and I cannot plant near the street for people get out of automobiles, climb the trees, shake them and pick up the apples in dress suit cases! I was interested in the account of your distinguished neighbors. I am not to be outdone My next neighbor has been in jail for stealing. He stole a furnace from a City Man's country home and set it up in his own house! I call that enterprising. More, another neighbor lost a cow from a snake bite in the bog. I took particular pains to find out what kind it was and the report came back that it was a copper head - I think that must be the local name for a rattlesnake and I did not receive the news pleasantly. I did not, could not plant the seed you sent because there was no room in the bed and it has rained all the time so we could get no new ones. It may be too late but that seed is going in today Aug 30. We may have a warm Sept. yet. If so it will come along all right, if not I shall lose it. You must remember that I am not farming as a first object, but merely incidental to ratification which gets first attention. I might tell you interesting tales about that and retale several causes for worry but Clara can tell you most of it and I am not allowing it to keep me from sleeping well on my fine porch. Since you were here, the porch has been completed and is CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT 404 RIVERSIDE DRIVE NEW YORK a splendid success, above and below. We have new electric lights which make us comfortable and we can read anywhere. The root cellar is finished and contains two fine cupboards for preserves. I have at this date 22 quarts of tomatoes, 2 of corn, 8 of beans and 3 of chili sauce - all of my own handiwork to put in it. We have had four rustic settees made. One rests beside the brook under a spreading shade, one is on the front lawn, one is on top of the big rock out of which grows that wonderful tree and it is the very finest place for dreaming I know. It will be kept for guests - I shall never have time. We have cut some wide but rough paths through the woods and found a field of blue berries I didn't know we had. Along one of these paths on a hill is another big rock and the third seat is on top of it. It is in the center of the big trees. The Board (NY Section) are to meet with me next Friday if weather permits and I am going to take them to the woods and dedicate one tree in memory to Dr. Shaw. I wanted to do more but I couldn't get the plates in time Clara's ingenuity finally found the place to get them. Eventually there will be at least eight and I hope ten. (1) The Grimke Sisters - (a twin tulip tree) The Protestors (2) Abby Kelly who broke the silence of women (3) Lucretia Mott who followed her conscience (4) Lucy Stone who blazed a trail (5) Susan B Anthony who led the way (6) Elizabeth Cady Stanton who - dont know - (7) Anna Harriet Shaw who convinced the world (8) Lillie Devereux Blake the pioneer of New York. 9 Millicent Garrett Fawcett who led British women to political freedom 10 Dr Aletta Jacob who led Dutch women to political freedom - and maybe all the other countries will get a tree too - Frau Cauer for Germany &c If you have any expression for any of the above better than mine tell me. We will begin with Dr Shaws memorial tree. Maybe I haven't trees enough to go around Then I propose to get the pictures at all the ones honored in my Suffrage Memorial Park to hang in my library. The big rock split by the curious tree is going to be named and its name painted on it - The Rock of Prejudice and The One Truth. Maybe I am not having fun. Now I've found a Susan B Anthony and Frances Willard peony and I've ordered them! - of course. CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT 404 RIVERSIDE DRIVE NEW YORK The road building has mussed up the place frightfully but I now have my design which I enclose. If it isn't pretty then I've had fun anyway. Next summer I think I'll be worth visiting. but that international thing rises to perplex me and maybe my fun won't come off The rain has ceased and I am off to help John plant some mushrooms (hope they won't kill any body) We shall have a new strawberry bed which we are putting out. Well, Farmer Peck, I'm glad to know all the things you are doing in your garden. Clara tells me how pretty it is. O', I haven't any tree good enough to graft on I'll never get a Deacon Jones and now, I am doubtful if a tree would flourish if I had one. I'll be dead before I could get an apple. So forget the Deacon. Lovingly C C Catt Farmer CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT 404 RIVERSIDE DRIVE NEW YORK Millwood Sept 23, 1919. Dear Mary: I am so weary of rain, that my summons to the next world would be welcome provided I can be assured that it is dry! Yet, my waterfall is a wonder today and the brook looks like a spring freshet. I staid home today to superintend some work and it has rained unceasingly for twenty four hours with no signs of ever stopping. It certainly has been a trying summer for amateur gardeners who at the same time are trying to emancipate their sex. Nearly three weeks ago the car broke down and has been in hospital ever since. Mollie is staying in town for some evening meetings and I am expecting Clara. They are proof that two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. She said [*Clara*] she had a good time and that your garden is beautiful. She will tell me more tonight. My roadmakers have had hard luck with weather and will be here probably a month more. They are doing a good job but will hardly be through in time to do much laying out this autumn. But, we shall do something. I shall not be able to rival your garden for some years if ever. The holy hocks will be ready for transplanting (your seed) despite the fact that I let them struggle with weeds. The delphiniums and columbines are up but they did not get planted when ordered. There was no place and the rain wouldn't permit. Now do I transplant to the place I want them this autumn or wait until they appear next spring? - I mean all three. The books say that columbine is fine planted in the woods. I am letting the sun in and perhaps will put some there. Farming is a good deal like life In spring and youth all is hope with abundant expectancy of beauty and eventualities. In the fall and "advancing years," all nature bids you get what you can out of failures and debris and be content that you get anything. It is fall and the wretched rain is rotting things without the slightest regard to the high cost of living and my Governors politely tell me that they will call their special sessions when they are ready and not before and I was convinced when I left the office last night that most of them wouldn't do it before January and that we cannot celebrate on Miss Anthony's birthday. So with the train and the rot and the Governors I have been down to the bottom of the dumps today. CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT 404 RIVERSIDE DRIVE NEW YORK I bought a few new novels for my guests if any should get marooned here in bad weather. I have started two and finished two and if they represent the average of present day literature or reflect the popular mind, I must say the outlook is gloomy. The Illustrious Prince (Oppenheim) is a good detective story and one which will go a long way toward speeding up a war with Japan. Saints Progress (Galworthy) is simply damnable. One's spirits keep sinking lower and lower until suicide seems tempting with the last paragraph. The others were so depressing. I could not get beyond the first chapters. Then I turn to the newspapers to get stabilized and read of strikes in every column except those where the Senate is calling the President names or he is retaliating and calling it names. It is hard to get an ideal which will hold its head up in the midst of the halocaust (whatever that is) that is sweeping the world. Here we have been working for a century to secure to women an equal share in political freedom upon the supposition that we face for all is achieved by that method. It is about here when lo! we discover that political methods are futile and the direct method- force - is the only one which counts. That is what the world started with and now it is going back to it. I am having difficulty to find a place to lang on to. It is infinitely sadder and more anxious time that the war period Eight millions of men - heroes - lie dead, but what were they heroes for and what good did it do? If you know tell me. Crime is terrifying in its frequency and the Senate debates seem not to find a cue which is inspiring to the general public. We need confidence in something but nothing commands it. Well, dear Mary, I am dumpish surely and will quit wagging about it. Those two alternatives: I do not accept either. I am glad to begin exchanging seeds. I send herewith some Canadian melon seeds. The fruit appeared in the market for the first time this year so you may not have seen it. They resemble a green and white striped summer squash in color and skin, but are shaped like a water melon and half as large. They are very nice. If they will grow in Canada they will in R.I.D. My apples have now matured and I find I have Baldwins, Russels, Greening Halvorsons and a Rued(?) I cannot make out. All are small, scably but the best are of excellent flora. I shall try to do better another year. Fortunately this was my off year and there are not too many. My family are all restless and want to go back to town. I still like the farm. Good bye C.C.C. O.S. CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT 404 RIVERSIDE DRIVE NEW YORK Well Clara came with her pictures of your garden and of its presiding goddess and brought the box of apples and a letter from you boasting of your great tomato but saying nothing about the box. Now, what is the Ezra Jones story? Did he not return home from the Revolution bringing euters(?) the tree or a graft? Well then from where did he bring it. He had to return via N.Y. and the Hudson and why not via Juniper Lodge? We have the cannon ball found on the place where soldier Ezra or some where defended he's country and I think he got his apple tree here!! I'll admit the original has not survived but there are many vacancies in my orchard. At any rate I never saw a prettier or ate a better apple than the Deacon's and I thank you immensely (never had that Revd a thank you before did you?) for them. Now the boys have picked up or picked some six barrels of apples of divers sorts of which we propose to make cider for vinegar I'm longing to know how much the scab and w[?]es and rot improve the quality of the vinegar and what apples make the best drinking cider. I fancy russels are good for it and we have lots of these but all [?]uper feel merly and wormy. I think we shall have about tree barrels to put away for winter. They are not up to yours in size or quality but they are fair - and dear Mary this is not my apple year. Last year they sold for cider somewhere between 25 and 50 barrels! Apparently they were not good enough for any other purpose, but I am going to pick out a dozen trees and give them the best treatment science knows. I don't expect to catch with the E.J but I'll see what can be done. Clara and I have gathered the first lot of butternuts hickory nuts and hazel nuts and I have packed 147 jars of canned stuff or jelly stuff ready for revival. For a long time, I thought you a connoisseur on all that grows, but I've discovered that my hickory nuts are the real thing and not butter nuts, my elm- birch-beech trees are yellow birch and the one which resembled it is black ash and that the leaf you did not know at all is dogwood. All of which f[?]nes that you've been bluffing. I'll still trust you implicitly on flowers!! I would like to see your garden. I have no scales so I have neither weighed nor measured my ponderosas and altho I contend that I'll beat you next year, I'll surrender now for the rain has split and soiled and marred mine so that I cannot enter the lists this fall. I am glad to get your counsel to rose garden, but I don't think I'll have it next year. We have had one glorious day and I do not feel so badly about the Governors as I did last night. C.C.C. 404 Riverside. CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT [2 WEST 86th ST.] NEW YORK Jan 2, 1920 Dear Mary: Your impelling inquiries call forth this response - probably the last letter you will receive before June. The Spain congress dates are May 2j-8. I was much dejected at first for suffraging in may is decidedly in conflict with farming. We know nothing about the rest of the trip as yet. We think it will be somewhere between $600 and $800 - thats a lot. We will let you know when we know. I got a new delegate today - Maud Nathan. She has begun Spanish already and with nothing else to do will doubtless speak it fluently by the time we arrive. I note that you and other movie stars will be here about the middle of the month. Well, lets see you when you come. If you see my eye in fine frenzy rolling, you will look out, for I shall be in the maze of my "address..I am deaf to all other things when thats on and its a wonder such one didn't leave me with thrombosis. I never heard yet until I read today that this is the President's malady. I am sure I've barely escaped it many times Edgar - he is a real person. When iw as about 12 I was in love with him and we were engaged. Then things happened and he went away to school. My father captured the letters. By and bye he married, so did I. When his wife died and so did my husband, and he proposed we should then carry out the child engagement, but I'd got over it. So he married again and so did I. Then his wife died and so did my husband and he proposed again, but I had got through. So he married again and I didn't. Then no 3 died and I took breakfast with him in San Francisco. An old man around a farm might be handy. Now that labor is scarce and high, don't you think? Those apple trees you mentioned I'd like to have you tell me what about them. What did you mean? I've had the coats taken off all my apple trees. Do you do that? My road is finished and I think it looks pretty well, but everthing was left with the clay well filled in but on top. We couldn't get the grass seed sown and it rained so perpetually, we could not do the plowing. Now that I must absent myself for so long a period in the spring, I fear we shall make little progress in beautifying next summer. We drive out once a week. Our cow is promising us a calf about Feb 1,the other is still giving milk and will come in again about April. The first one had an immaculate conception. The milk is kept in the root cellar. We bring in sweet milk, sweet cream, cream for churning, eggs (We get 2 dozen per week) potatoes, apples, salsify, parsnips and beets, carrots and onions. The other things are gone. I take a walk around and see John's work we have a hope - paid $300 for him. I went to order some clothes today for Chicago and madrid. I did and the prince as made me sad ever since. It seems [?]athmcked for me to be having heads sown all over myself when folks are starving, but that is what is going to happen. I should like you to know that I am ashamed of it. There is a dinner on Thursday at which Lou McCullen President Lorrell and [?] little me are to expound the League of Nations. I'm as likely to get thrombosis over that as anything. When you come down I may be shut away with a nurse. I'd have a nice rest anyway. I'll wager a cookie the president is having the best time he has Ru[?] these last seven years. Lovingly C.C.C. March 14, 1920 CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT 404 RIVERSIDE DRIVE NEW YORK My dear Mary: I wish I knew just where I left off thanking you for the ceaseless procession of gifts. I know none of them were ever accepted with the grace and charm they deserved, but I fear some of them were never even acknowledged. I will begin with the head cheese. I wanted to write at once and ask whose head it was made of. I really do want you to get Elizas recipe so I can make some - when I'm free. It was fine and I had seen none since I was a child about half a century ago. If not too late allow me to thank you for it and say that our appetities approved even though our hands found no time to say so in the slow process of writing. Of course you think I haven't much on hand. Well I was eighteen days in Chicago each one with every minute filled I brought 100 examination papers home with me each of 27 questions and I have just finished them. These have been done mainly evenings and Sundays. I hope next week to get things sufficiently out of the way so that I can gein on the International Congress. The roads have been so impassable that we haven't been to the farm for six weeks. Yesterday Joseph went out on the train and brought in 14 dozen eggs and left as many there. We are now having them three times a day. I am so dejected over having to pull out of all my grand plans for Juniper just when I wanted to be there, that I cannot get enthused over that pesky Congress. I will say however that the apple trees will get planted before I go if they come. I want them to come with a bill attached please More you say you will send me some maple syrup. Now Mary, you must quit this. you cannot go to Geneva and waste your substance and send me m syrup too. So if you please I will now order one gallon at whatever price it is and we will do business. Will you? Please. Promise [the] no syrup will be received. I really ask this favor most humbly and sincerely. I am glad you are going to Geneva, and on the same boat. Yes there are things you can do for me 1. You can take a walk with me 20 times around the desk every morning CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT 404 RIVERSIDE DRIVE NEW YORK and every afternoon. 2. You can interpret to the customs officals at Herve, Paris. Dusseldorf and all the other places that I have nothing by dynamite in my numerous packages. 3. You can interview all the delegates alternates and visitors who want to complain of something and find out what ails them Then you can interpret for me and say that we are very sorry but it cannot be helped & you can take charge of all the crazy folks who attend the Congress and thus keep me from getting any crazier than I am. There probably will be some small things to fill in the interstices of this program if there are any. This assignment should do for the present. Well we are right up to the last trench and it will be a bitter fight, but the Lord, the REpublican and the Democratic Parties are all pulling together now and I mean to leave it to them, although I am to spend two days in the state next week - just to look on About April 1. will see us through I fancy - Although MIss Kelbnih(?) is going to them about the presidential election and have the decency(?) the women vote! That is a tidy job she's taken on and we can only wish her well with it. I brought home three heaping baskets of work and I must be up and at them. Please send me no gifts before I leave this land, as I cannot spare a minute to thank you for them. Yes. I was unnerved by the irese[?] that pin. How that could have been going on without my knowing it I cannot imagine. I haven't recovered yet. If not before I will meet you at the gang plank of the Royal George on May 19th. Lovingly Carrie Chapman Cate Carrie Chapman Catt 404 Riverside Drive New York March 26, 1920 Dear Mary: I am about tired to a finish but Ill rise in defense of my morals which you question when you accuse me of having disappeared from view for a few years. The truth is I had never come into view and it was a bit difficult[y] to piece things together and to give myself a satisfactory accounting of my comings and goings but now I have it and here it is. 1880 November. Graduated Iowa State College 1881 Studied law in law office all the year. About Oct 15 was invited to the principalship of the Mason City High School. As my father did not approve of my studying law I expected to teach to get the money to go to the University for end of my law course, so I regarded this offer as a plum which had fallen in my lap and accepted. 1882 Confirmed as Principal High School Mason City 1883 Confirmed as Principal. Applied for and got Superintendency of City Schools about March 1 (they called it a city) 1884 Served as Superintendent at Mason City 1885 January Married Leo Chapman Editor Mason City Republican 1886 April Mr. Chapman sold his paper and died in August. 1886 Aug - 1887 Aug Lived in San Francisco 1888 Made precarious living with lectures upon noble subjects. Lord what a check I had. 1889 Same. Attended Suffrage Convention - you say it was at Oskaloosa. I was invited to speak by Margaret Campbell who was an American booster. She thought that if I would lecture I ought to have something worth talking about. There I met L. Stone. 1890 I attended the convention of the two associations in Washington as a delegate from the Iowa Assn which belonged to the American. I must have been asked to speak because they did not have their full quota and were so hard up, they took me. Now I did go to a convention at Waterloo in 1885. There was no organization in Mason City but I read that there was to be such a convention and went. Now does this explain? I really never appeared in the suffrage movement until Oct. 1889 at the Iowa Convention. I never quit from that date. All of this is very dull history and you cannot make me [?] in historical character The vote today would mean rejection. Time is working for us. They will probably adjourn today until Monday. I do not know - it is in God's, Will Hays and Homer Cummings hands. The women are giving the two last named no peace and praying to the first with a ferver they never felt before This seems sacrilegious, but those appear to be the [?] in the situation. There are those who think we shall win Delaware and those who think we won't. It doesn't matter much - only that I feel so ashamed of our conservatism and ignorance. I feel that we have repudiated the aims of the war and set ourselves up as the Chief Reactionary among Nations. You would have inflated my conceit March 28, 1920 Dear Mary: I am sorry that you are not going to Geneva and I am also sorry that I am. You seemed to want to go and I don't. The fact is that I have made an unpleasant discovery. For about seventy or eighty years I now find, I have been a good deal of a jingo and didn't realize it. Now, that I am so ashamed of my country that I want to crawl away like a yellow cur with his tail between his legs, under a chair and hide I do not like exhibiting my humiliation to boastful people of other lands. The tail between legs attitude has been growing ever since the armistice. It got repeated stimulation during the Sensational bursts of emotion and finally became a permanent melancholia. When those 96 men - super men - gave it up and left us disgraced before the world. There have been several other influences and I got one of them hard yesterday. I went for the second time to Delaware where the Waterloo for somebody is being bought and hostility by women and men of the raiety we used to see twenty five years ago was rampant. It was equal battle. The suffragists had two hours in the morning and I never heard a better presentation (I was not speaking) We lunched on the green in front of the Capital on a selection from several lunch taxes brought by motor visitors. Then the Aulis had two hours and I a half hour of ruttal. The town was flooded with suffragists and Autis of both sexes and the room was suffocating with every inch of room taken. I make and I rush for the brain when I was through and so did the rest of them. and this would have helped me to hold up my head - so I'm sorry you are not going. You are in no way blamable for changing your mind and I think you ought to stay by that fine father of yours. I am going to Juniper today- otherwise I should have gone to bed and sent for a nurse - and I am going to forget about all my troubles for a few hours. I get bad attacks of that tired feeling "whenever I think of our last states Oklahoma, Washington. N. Va and Glanare. They make me long for a spring tonic and to think about revising my will. Lovingly Over C.C.C. P.S. I went. The snow is largely gone and the place looks like the mischief. We tore up, we filled, we graded &c and it rained all the time and no grass seed was planted - therefore mud, mud. Well we move out May 1 and I'll stay there all I can before I leave and try to improve the situation. It will take some years to come up to tracks of what we did last year. I'll be there to receive those apple trees and to pay for them Mary Jane. This year I'm going to build a garage and do some grading C.C.C. Monday evening My dear Mary: April 2, 1920 I was expecting to have you participate in a sandwich today and was much disappointed to learn that you had passed through on Saturday without giving us proper warning. I went to the farm Saturday as I always do. Half an hour after I had gone, the trees arrived and are reposing in the kitchen waiting for the next trip which will be Wednesday. The can of syrup has also arrived. No bill for either has yet been received . I want one for both, in order to keep up my self respect. If you do not send it, I shall have to send you an airplane to balance accounts and I hope you will not drive me to that. Please Mary. Let me have my just due. There seems always to be thorns on roses Last summer Annie and Mary had a joint brain storm and haven't spoken to each other except on business for six months, so of course Mary will not return to the farm and she is my favorite. John has just served notice that he will have $125-per month to go and with a going away due in a few days the outlook is troublesome. Miss Hay has had bronchial pneumonia and has had a narrow escape from the labor variety She is still in bed and has been home some ten days. On the other hand, I am doing all sorts of interesting things at the farm which you would approve and have a contractor with eleven men at work. [doing] The rains last fall prevented the completion of the road before freezing and the result is that our spring work is overwhelming. I have planned a berry garden to contain blackberries, black and red and ever bearing raspberries, loganberries, curants, gooseberries, and blue berries. If the strikers allow them to arrive and the boy is able to get them out, somebody, some time will have a fine berry patch I am obliged to leave before the spring work is done, so my summer will not be very satisfying nor will it put things in order as I had hoped. I may wish I had never dreamed of a farm. Meanwhile we are in the agonies of despair over the 4# needed "perfect 36". We are spending more money and doing more and bigger things than for many months and the nerve strain of it all is frightful. Clara is working like a house-a-fire over the American delegation and is doing it all splendidly. She will leave me when I get back. This is final. 2 I thought she found things unpleasant because of the tilt between her and Miss Hay but that isn't it. She doesn't approve of me and cannot stand me any more. I must say she is a young woman of rare taste. In the midst of this melee I've got to manufacture an international address!!! Well that is about all my troubles. I did not thank you for the trees and syrup because I want to pay for them. I am eternally and magnificently grateful for your kind thought though. I hope to live to eat apples from the trees, if I don't have to sell the farm in sheer desperation over my "labor problem I'd like to rent it on shares to you and Eliza. You could milk and she could make butter and I'd get the bread to spread it on. It was a great mistake to have abolished slavery, wasn't it? Well Mary dear I hope all is well with you. Have you any more pictures to c[?]sure down this way before I go? I hope I shall return and that you will visit the farm to see my terraced garden Lovingly Carrie C. Catt NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION BRANCH OF INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ALLIANCE AND OF NATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN MRS.CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, President NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, 171 MADISON AVENUE TELEPHONE, 4818 MURRAY HILL NEW YORK 1ST VICE-PRESIDENT MRS. STANLEY MCCORMICK, MASS. 2ND VICE-PRESIDENT MISS MARY GARRETT HAY, NEW YORK 3RD VICE-PRESIDENT MRS. GUILFORD DUDLEY, TENNESSEE 4TH VICE-PRESIDENT MRS. RAYMOND BROWN, NEW YORK 5TH VICE-PRESIDENT MRS. HELEN GARDENER, WASHINGTON, D.C. TREASURER MRS. HENRY WADE ROGERS, CONNECTICUT CORRESPONDING SECRETARY MRS. FRANK J. SHULER, NEW YORK RECORDING SECRETARY MRS. HALSEY W. WILSON, NEW YORK DIRECTORS MRS. CHARLES H. BROOKS, Kansas MRS. J. C. CANTRILL, Kentucky MRS. RICHARD E. EDWARDS, Indiana MRS. GEORGE GELLHORN, Missouri MRS. BEN HOOPER, Wisconsin MRS. ARTHUR LIVERMORE, New York MISS ESTHER G. OGDEN, New York MRS. GEORGE A. PIERSOL, Pennsylvania PRESS DEPARTMENT MISS ROSE YOUNG, Director 171 Madison Ave., New York Nashville Sunday Aug 15, 1920 Hermitage Hotel Dear Mary: I certainly do congratulate you upon your new future. I cannot welcome you into the “capitalist class” because I do not belong there I am a “busted capitalist”. I am glad that you can buy me a platinum tiara, but if you please I don’t want one. Maybe you’ll have to give all of it to suffrage yet. We now have 35 1/2 states. We are up to our last half of a state. With all the political pressure, it ought to be easy; but the opposition of every sort is here fighting with no scruple desperately. [?], [?] L. Clay and [?] Gordon are here appealing to Negro- phobia and every other cave man’s prejudice. Men, lots of them, are here. What do they represent? God only knows. We believe they are buying votes we have a poll of the house showing victory but they are trying to keep them at home, to break a quorum and God only knows the outcome. We are terribly worried and so is the other side. We hope our fate will be decided this week but God only knows that. I've been here a month. It is hot, muggy nasty, and this last battle is desperate. Therefore you will understand if there is little I can say to you today. Watch the papers. If we win, well and good. If we lose, there will be no state before November and if the opposition can buy Tenn, why can they not buy any other state and thus keep us on the job a long time. That may be our fate and will be begin by requesting an annual contribution from the near future. We are low in our minds - even if we win we who have been here will never remember it with anything but a shudder. Verily the way of the reformer is hard. I shall go home of course as soon as we are through here. Well, I'm glad of your good fortune. Bring your jewels to New York and show them to the big jewelers. They will give nothing much for the gold [?] but will pay for the jewels. Lovingly, Carrie C Catt Juniper Lodge Sept 6, 1920 My dear Mary: I hasten to notify you that I will aid you to sell your diamond ring and your lorgnette when you come down, lest you fall in love with someone and really give them away. Dr. Jacob went around the world with me on the proceeds of the sale of a single picture. That ring plus the lorgnette would take you to S. America and back - perhaps I hope your fortune is not so vast that you will scorn small economies like this - but yes decorate yourself and try to measure up to the Capitalist standard! However, I'll accept the offering of the [?] and Mr Hawley in a small allotment. They may if coming by express be directed home at Ossining or parcel post at Millwood, Westchester Co and in each case they should be so calculated that they will each their destination on a Saturday and I should be instructed to be on the look out for them. Your [?] that the mistress of these acres has been away three months right out of the heart of this summer therefore there have been some slips that won't be when she is home. Yet things look better than they did and now I've ordered a green house! I've wanted one worse or more than any one thing. It is to be small- but expensive. The day after I ordered it, I lunched at Mrs. Kuderlefs(?) with some big wigs of the country to consult over the Wadsworth matter, and sever experienced ladies said that a greenhouse is the worst disappointing investment they had ever known. Well, my nose is pointed that way and when it is done, it will be my last building. I do not know that I will start it this winter. What is in my flower garden? Well, it hasn't been a great success. You sent me some marigold seed and I gathered the seeds they made. i got some from the U.S.A - last distribution - and these are making quite a showing. From Miss hay o somewhere I got a lot of aster seed and it is just now showing what it can do and is far more satisfactory than any asters I ever had before. I've always had bugs but so far there are none. Then there is a little cosmos, and some dahlias - some I bought and some Mrs. Milleux sent me. You sent me some hollyhock seed and I planted it and transplanted it last fall, but they did not grow at all. Perhaps three or four have blossomed but I have sowed no seed this year. You sent me some delphiniums and columbine which I sowed late last year and not in NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION BRANCH OF INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ALLIANCE AND OF NATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN MRS. CARRIER CHAPMAN CATT, President NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, 171 MADISON AVENUE TELEPHONE, 4818 MURRAY HILL NEW YORK PRESS DEPARTMENT MISS ROSE YOUNG, Director 171 Madison Ave., New York a very good place. They are still there but have shown no inclination to blossom I bought a few perennial pints (wot's their name) and I think in a year or two they will do well. I meant to get things going this fall if possible, so that next year I will really have something to look at. Mrs. Grussel ( a friend of Mollies) brought me a present of six gold fishes which are certainly an ornament in the pool We have a good collection of iris, some narcissus tulips and a few lillies. The bulbs and perennials seem to play best here. Concerning Wadsworth I am to conduct a school next week Wednesday on the quiet to teach women what to say. I have not approved of the campaign thus far but now the women seem to be getting down to deadly business and perhaps they may hit him a clip that will tell Mollie is talking of going up state to speak do not know definitely whether it is so decided nor what the dates will be. You might time your visit to New York to fill her absence but [?] that don't turn out. I think you need not be scared of the were here. I'd like to show Juniper to you as it grows. If you should come, I have full directions for grafting trees, raffia etc which you sent but I cannot manage it. There are two likely little wild trees and I'd like you to bring along some slips and graft them. You may make them into pears or pumpkins if you like--anything but late fall Baldwins. The trees you sent are doing well but I doubt if they bring me an apple before my demise. It takes optimism for an old lady to plant young fruit trees. Those Antis are giving me no rest. The entire anti press of the South are screeching at me, and dear old Everett tells us that they propose "to enjoin and [?]" all the election boards. So, as I am not a lawyer and a bit out of my depth, I have to keep my eyes open and my nerves alert, lest they do put something over on us that no one expects. So life is not yet the calm pacific thing you imagine. I've been officially invited to "come out" for the Republicans and for the Democrats. Just watch for my debut! How would you you like to collaborate on a detective story with [?] as its basis? Someone could do a big best seller. I want to but I'd quit at the end of the first page. I am proposing to go to the office one day a week. I did it the first week. This week I go three days! Mrs Pennybacker spent Wednesday and Mrs M. W. Park spent Sunday with us. Mrs Harper is coming this Sunday and Ida Blair the following. That about finishes the list. Now for the sleeping porch. Let me know when you are coming down. You must arrange to pay us a visit and inspect my experiments and give me some advise. Lovingly C.C.C. Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission, Inc. Vice-President Mary Garrett Hay President Carrie Chapman Catt Secretary and Treasurer Gratia Goller Directors Mrs. Winston Churchill...New Hampshire Mrs. Arthur L. Livermore...New York Mrs. Percy V. Pennybacker...Texas Directors Mrs. Raymond Robins...Illinois Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton...Ohio Mrs. Thomas B. Wells...New York Telephone: 4818 Murray Hill 171 Madison Avenue Juniper Ledge New York, Sept 21, 1920 My dear Mary: I don't know that I ever had a guest before to whom I did not say good bye. But then you did not say it to me. This is to say that I have brought three big baskets of work out with me and mean to stay here all by my lonesomes reflecting on the ignorant submission to dictation of the masses, the joy of being a farmer, and the freedom from all responsibility I hope to enjoy. It will further inform you that yesterday being a town day, I put in twelve hours of work, ate two Hawley apples which exceed anything I have met of the apple kind in quality unless it is the Deacon Ezra, and today I have a headache. Now I'm going outdoors to garden vegetables and seeds and enjoy myself. It was nice to have you around, but I'm sorry you do not enjoy disquisitions on horticulture etc. Well, come again. Lovingly, C.C.C. Sept. 30, 1920 My dear Mary: I am not coming up state to speak on any subject. I did not go to Philadelphia. I am going nowhere. Just as I was leaving the office, that mysterious box said to contain asters arrived. Clara could not be induced to open it and take a share, so the whole big box fell to me. Those asters are wonderful and put mine quite to shame-- except the daisy like ones which I think are pretty. When it comes to producing things, it is clear that Geneva way can beat the Juniper way. I don't think I could ever grow such big bobbing beauties (practicing alliteration for the novel). Rose Young is sick and I fear will make a slow recovery as it is neuritis. Miss White who is taking her place had something happen to her and she is in a hospital. So I do not think I shall complete my stay here this week. I [?] not to go to town at all. The anti [?] office is going full blast and they are getting good responses and I hope the vote will show some effect. When women with immature experience buck up against a party organized for sixty years, they find themselves where men have found themselves before now. Many of those men have given up, and know as little that is going on as possible. Still we are climbing on toward the millennium I suppose. So you are going to flirt with me. Just what does that mean? If I could set you to [?] the romantic pages of the novel perhaps that would absorb your tendencies to play with the affections of an old woman. You better keep to blackberries and hollyhocks. Your little apple tree with the black apples has been doctored and is bare of leaves or lice, but the expert happened around and he says that does not matter--it is all right. My, my diseases in flowers, trees melons tomatoes and politics and cows. What a world. I've promised some letters re Wadsworth for other folks to sign and I must get at it. It rains today and we are out of coal and none can be had. No hot water, no baked potatoes. Lovingly, C.C.C. Juniper Ledge Oct 12, 1920 My dear Mary: This is the day Columbus staked by Isabella made good. I am sorry it is a sad dreary day for the sake of the millions who would have had a holiday to be always remembered had it been like yesterday, soft, sunny and bright. As for me, I've had a good time. No workmen here, no telephone call, no newspaper, no mail. Mollie away preaching anti Wadsworth. So, John and I ripped up the place and made preparation for winter. The greenhouse is growing and I've torn my few geraniums will [?] to made them multiply for next years bedding. The green tomatoes simply rot and the ripe ones are gone. They tell me it is well, because it have been seized by rheumatics in all points of the compass and they are trying to make me think it is due to tomatoes. Well it is worth it. I am hoping that I may really farm to my hearts content next summer. I will probably have enough of it by that time. Last Saturday I cleaned my fingernails, put on my best dress and went forth to slay Wadsworth along with some others. One was Dr. K. Davis. We brought her home to dinner. She is going to vote for Harding because she wants the League of Nations ratified! She figures it out that he will have an abler cabinet and they will find a way out--at any rate she cannot bring herself to vote for a democrat so she is putting her faith in the Lord. The way [in which] people circumnavigate a question in order to find an excuse for sticking to their grandfather's faith is always amusing to me since I extracted my inherited traits so far as politics goes some time ago. Read my piece in the Citizen and see if you tell how I am going to vote. Rosa is still laid way; Miss White is still in a hospital and I've been trying to help out on the Citizen. The Lord made me for a farmer and not for an idler. We had a call at 171 from the editor of the bulletin sent out by the women republicans. It is a man. I am sorry I did not see him. He told Mrs Shuler that the Republicans and the Democrats were going to unite and kill the League of Women Voters and would have it finished in a year! Now the novel: I would really like to do it, but I have no imagination, no sense of the romantic or the picturesque and no quality which breeds a plot. To tell the story about as it was with a detective finding out the things we want to put in was my idea. We have two heroes, one old, one young, and we have two villains, one old, one young. We must include a heroine or two. Of course the state and capital must be given guess names, but I think it wouldn't trouble anyone to locate the spot. Now can the villains, named something else find cause for libel? I wonder. Of course I couldn't do it alone. My idea has been that I must rest, exercise and get myself back on the trolley. I've been off pretty hard. Then after I get back from London Mrs Shuler and I are thinking of writing 3 the story of ratification in a small volume. In reality a very brief history of the movement and after that I was hoping that you and I would do the novel. Now to tell you the frank truth--I cannot compose a thing I can neither speak nor write grammatically and I have no style. Now I cannot do what I do do except in a very slow laborious way and I am sure that the initial attempt at the first chapter will cause me to throw up my hands--so I think that novel will never materialize. As to writing an autobiography--there would be nothing to write. There has never been a single picturesque incident in my entire life and I have never done anything but spade work anyhow. I really think there is a fighting chance to defeat Wadsworth. Of course the idea prevails that the Republicans will sweep the country and I think they will. The New Republic says that the more times Harding shows he is a fool the more certain does it become that most everyone is going to vote for him. Yet even so, Mrs [?] will pull a good vote and it will come out of the Wadsworth strength I think. What I'm thinking may cut Walker in. He's nothing great, but he will at least whip the Republicans into believing themselves. Mollie is working like mad. I decline to go upstate. I shall stay in town one night for a Cooper Union meeting but that's about my limit. I am imagining that I am not free to enjoy the fruits of victory yet. The rest of you must do that job. Yes, dear lady, those asters were as I said in perfect condition and as I told you Clara never saw them at all. I had them several days. They were wonderful. We are having the furnace going--on account of the unrest of my family and incidentally because a cold house is not good for rheumatism. The result is that no flower will keep fresh more than fifteen minutes. That's a pity--the dahlias and cosmos are fine. I am flirting now. Do you recognize the fact. Annie announces dinner, so here I go. This is a reply to your half dozen last received. To be sure, I did not reply to your remarks whatever they were. You always put in something which compels me to consign the epistle to the flowers, and then I forget what was in it as soon as I can. I am glad you are doing Waddy. Keep after him. Maybe the public ins't so idiotic as the Republic would have us think. Lovingly, C.C.C. Oct 12, 1920 National American Woman Suffrage Association Branch of International Woman Suffrage Alliance and of National Council of Women Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President National Headquarters, 171 Madison Avenue Telephone, 4818 Murray Hill New York 429 Press Department Miss Rose Young, Director 171 Madison Ave., New York 1st Vice-President Mrs. Stanley McCormick, Mass. 2nd Vice-President Miss Mary Garrett Hay, New York 3rd Vice-President Mrs. Guilford Dudley, Tennessee 4th Vice-President Mrs. Raymond Brown, New York 5th Vice-President Mrs. Helen Gardener, Washington, D. C. Treasurer Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, Connecticut Corresponding Secretary Mrs. Frank J. Shuler, New York Recording Secretary Mrs. Halsey W. Wilson, New York Directors Mrs. Charles H. Brooks, Kansas Mrs. J. C. Cantrill, Kentucky Mrs. Richard E. Edwards, Indiana Mrs. George Gellhorn, Missouri Mrs. Ben Hooper, Wisconsin Mrs. Arthur Livermore, New York Miss Esther G. Ogden, New York Mrs. George A Piersol, Pennsylvania Apr 23, 1920 Mid Ocean Dear Mary, You must have written that ship letter before hearing the worst. I've done several things lately much more erratic than the cow did when she jumped the moon. At least that is what several erstwhile friends think and as they are persons of astute judgement I presume they know. I elected Wadsworth by coming out for the League of Nations. I've killed the League of Women Voters dead as a coffin nail by staying out for the said L of N. What little influence I once had, is entirely evaporated. New friends have left me and old friends now regard me coldly. At last I am free with no guardian but my conscience and I am rather enjoying this suddenly won isolation. I got it by making a speech--an impulsive speech, which Beatrice Hall fired me up to do. I don't know at all what I said in it, so I can't defend myself when I'm charged with divers mis- demeanors. It must have been a terrible speech judging by the way some folks acted. Perhaps by this time you will have learned that I am a pariah and that hosts are praying that the [???erator] will take me down to the place where fishes oil makes itself into automobile gas. They could then say I had gone off my head--poor thing. Well, if they will let me stay a pariah I'll have one good time farming. I have all the building done I am expect to do. The garage and the green house are going concerns. I've bought the strip of marsh plus rock plus snakes across the road--25 acres for $5500. It includes the house which I can fix over for Jimmy Tollifer when he comes. Now all I have to do is to make the place look well. A Pariah can get on better than a farmer with a [?] tied around her neck. I think I'll make a pond where the brook flows into the river and stock it with fish, ducks, geese and bull frogs wot have laigs. I think I'd get on happily if I could subdue my family and keep away from places where speeches are made. Thanks for all that farm talk. I'll try those cherry tomatoes next year. I had some red and yellow plum tomatoes this year, but another year that garden of mine National American Woman Suffrage Association Branch of International Woman Suffrage Alliance and of National Council of Women Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President National Headquarters, 171 Madison Avenue Telephone, 4818 Murray Hill New York 429 Press Department Miss Rose Young, Director 171 Madison Ave., New York 1st Vice-President Mrs. Stanley McCormick, Mass. 2nd Vice-President Miss Mary Garrett Hay, New York 3rd Vice-President Mrs. Guilford Dudley, Tennessee 4th Vice-President Mrs. Raymond Brown, New York 5th Vice-President Mrs. Helen Gardener, Washington, D. C. Treasurer Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers, Connecticut Corresponding Secretary Mrs. Frank J. Shuler, New York Recording Secretary Mrs. Halsey W. Wilson, New York Directors Mrs. Charles H. Brooks, Kansas Mrs. J. C. Cantrill, Kentucky Mrs. Richard E. Edwards, Indiana Mrs. George Gellhorn, Missouri Mrs. Ben Hooper, Wisconsin Mrs. Arthur Livermore, New York Miss Esther G. Ogden, New York Mrs. George A Piersol, Pennsylvania 2 will be worthy of its mistress. I think I'll do better with flowers too. I found zinnias most admirable too when most things were gone. The dahlias and cosmos staid by till the hard freeze blighted everything. I'll try the gaillardias next year. I am going in for perennials and if I am not dead broke I mean to invest in a lot of gladiolis--they also seemed pretty tough. I have carnations, roses and lillies of the valley for fencing and a good many pots of tulips narcissus, jonquils in the green house etc hoping for blossoms. I shall never have a garden as fine as yours because the land doesn't lie right for it and my soil isn't as good as yours. I'll tell you about the Council of Women and its relations to the Alliance when I get back. We had some delegates there and they will report. I don't believe I shall get a "discerning view" of things British in my fortnight but I'll try to learn something. I sent that movie business as a joke and also to let you see a sample of the things we were getting It was tiresome to draw a lecture. You can no more argue with me on the question of censorship than we could argue with some (?) on suffrage for the same reason- minds utterly blank You asked where Wilson fell down and if he did really He failed on prohibition. He stirred all the dry f[?]ces when he recommended the ex[?]plen of beer from the war prohibition can and stirred them to a fighting rage when he vetoed the Valstead Act. I brought some papers with me which claim that the prohibitionists elected Harding. Of course they didn't but when that branch of vets pushed box forword, the probhibs were aroused to action and they fought at Cox tooth and toenail. Its queer that question which was in neither platform should turn an election, yet it certainly did make a great effect if not a decisive one. I think the nation would have turned the Democrats out anyway for reasons aboirus enough. Wilson is really a great man and history will so measure him but he made mistakes. He is a better a partisan as Lodge and he wouldn't concede as much as he should to the Republicans. He ought never to have accepted the 6 votes for Gt Britain without getting 6 votes for the U.S.A. and when he confessed that he had written Px with his own hand it became the chief target. He guages fairly well NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION BRANCH OF INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ALLIANCE AND OF NATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN MRS. CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, President NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, 171 MADISON AVENUE TELEPHONE, 4818 MURRAY HILL NEW YORK PRESS DEPARTMENT MISS ROSE YOUNG, Director 171 Madison Ave., New York 3 what masses of people will do in the long run but he is no politician. I'm sorry for that wiggle waggle Harding. He will be a lucky president of some Drishirean(?) or Limie(?) Glalean(?) or Russian Jewish Bolshevik doesn't assassinate him. If he doesn't perish by the violence of some afour adopted celgi[?]es, the watives can be depend upon to flay him alive in genuine American fashion when he gets well on with his Administration. I am having one grand time. This is about the biggest ship afloat. The few hundred people on it look like a small flock of flies on a kitchen wall. I stay in bed until noon with a nice electric light over my bed and read after my 9 o'clock breakfast. At one I lunch and sit all alone at a little table Then I walk the deck awhile, sit out awhile (it's desperately cold) take tea in the salon, walk some more, dress for dinner, dine alone, and read awhile in the salon. I know three women only. Mrs. Pethick Lawrence is one, but they have not been seen for three days--foolish behavior. But that leaves me all alone to read write and think. We haven't good coal so we will be a couple of days late and I do not care a bit. I'm glad I am alone. I am getting rested and balanced and everything but repentant. I'm intending to make my last speeches in England and then swear off. My speeches kill things they say, and anyway it interferes with farming. The thing is to produce as you say, and as neither an old woman like me nor a single maiden like you cannot produce our own kind it will be our several duties to produce tomatoes and onions as well as our pleasure. Have you read Potterism? If not I'll send it to you. Now for my dinner toilet--therefore good night fair Mary. Are you still my friend or have you gone the way the rest of the gang are said when gone? I have read Dead Men's Money!!! Potterism Book of Thos. Hardy stories Not bad for Mrs [?????'s] Suffrage book 4 days Mrs. Sanger's book and a ton of prohibition stuff C.C.C. Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.