Dear Alec & Evalyn: I know I have been neglecting you a lot recently, but things here as regards Bess dont improve. She doesn't remember anything five minutes that she is told, and I'm quite convinced it is just her habit of not paying attention, to what is told her, plus her studied laziness that keeps me on the anxious seat all the time. I told her a few days ago that when I left here for Scotland (D.V.) she *would not be here*: then she spoke of getting her things in storage. Probably 9/10 of what she possesses is plain junk, and I would certainly not permit her to burden some home with it. I told her she would have to confine her needs to a couple of suit cases. When she came out here now nearly eight years ago I paid her way, and Robert paid her freight bill of some $130.00 plus. Since then I have sent her back to Chicago twice paying her traveling expense both ways. These things I'm not grumbling about now. They are history, but the present predicament is a steady headache for me for she cant be trusted to use the electric range, or else as has happened many, many times in the last few months, things boil over, and it takes endless effort to get the range back in shape. She doesn't remember where to find things that she is constantly using in the kitchen e.g. she asked me the other day if we had a tea pot, and I told her it was on the shelf above the electric range where it always is but even then I had to come out and put it into her hand, and then it dawned upon her that she had seen it before: and she has been using it for years. I am making preparations to have her in a home while I am gone-- probably about seven weeks with Jim, but I'm convinced that after that we will have to provide a home for her somewhere else. In that connection, she having lived in Washington over five years is entitled to *some* care from the state provided she has no funds of her own. She doesn't seem to remember whether she has any bonds in the Reserve Bank in Chicago, but if she has they will have to be used up in the ordinary way before she could demand State help. In other words the state wouldnt consent to them being sold out of her possession, and then immediately ask the state for assistance for her. It looks as if someone will have to be appointed guardian for her, and I am trying to see the local state branch in that connection and get things under way before we head for Scotland. A few weeks ago, I had a call from Evelyn in Eugene -- they found themselves up against trouble in connection with the new home they have been building for themselves there. Owing to some new regulations of the F.H.A., they found they couldnt qualify for their loan, and their house was nearly completed, so they were confronted with either getting out of it or trying to locate elsewhere so they needed $2500.00 which I sent at once. That caused me to change my will, and observe in it that the amount forwarded to her would have to apply on any remainder my estate might have for dividing at my passing. These things Alex are not going to detain Jim and me from our trip, and I only hope our health may keep sound until we have seen the old sod again. In a letter to the Carlton Hotel in Edinburgh recently asking for reservation of a room there for at least a week, I had in my letter quoted the first verse of Canto 6 Scotts Lay of the Last Minstrel. Just for fun I'll give you all the first verse from memory. Maybe you memorized it long ago -- but here it is from my memory "Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said: This is my own my native land. Whose heart hath nee'r within him burned As home his footsteps he has turned From wandering on a foreign strand. If such there breathe go mark him well For him no minstrel raptures swell. High though his titles proud his name Boundless his wealth as wish can claim Despite those titles, power and pelf The wretch concentered all in self -- Living shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. That's not bad for Sir Walter -- I doubt if I could have improved on it, even if I had been some punkins on this earth. Well now Alec I'll have to cut this short and get up to the mail box with it for there's only one collection on Sunday Much love always to both of you Tom