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Oak Park, Ill. 10:10 PM Wednesday night. Jan. 22/96 My darling Grace, - Your cheerful and brilliant letter of Saturday night and Sunday held me in silence for several minutes after lunch today. - All was so written as you only can write, as if it were engraved and I could hear you speak to me and whisper what Miss Fallows had said to you. - And I can assure you that when I am privileged to just acknowlege [sic] my love for you it is strengthened always just so much more, - always. Now I do wonder what Mae Van has been telling my fiancee.
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And we roaming across lots alone had but little help, but managed to pin up a great rent in my trousers from my knee to my ankle, - and finaly [sic] came quietly up to the back door of her house and secured a needle and thread of her kind mother and sat quietly out in the back yard under a great oak on a chopping block as I sewed up my pantaloon. Mae and her sister Emma wondering why I had not kept my appointment on
You are right as to dark leaves in history, - but I do want to know some of the jokes. - Perchance her memory cited some of the times Joe Rueff and I and Henry Angell and I, or me alone, have called at her house and taken tea or sat out on their old slat stave hammock and cracked hickory nuts on a flat iron. - Or perhaps she made you laugh by telling how one time when I was crossing the fields from Mr. Lackeys, to her house in "Oak Grove" I was hindered with my camera outfit for the simple reason I became lodged in a barb wire fence
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time, - finaly [sic] I made my appearance and the joke was soon discovered as in my haste to pin up the great tear in my trousers I had overlooked a great triangular tear in my coat over my shoulder. - This Mae insisted on sewing, so off with my coat I cracked nuts while all was neatly done. - It was always a joke how I was caught in John Lackey's barb wire. - Then ask her to tell you about a very good joke on me, which for a time amounted to an acquissation [sic] of a misdemeanor.- "Tying her Uncle Henry's duster to his cart wheel". - The good old gentleman is tolerable deaf and very devout in church
management and rather insists on certain of his views and as a result some of the boys have in days gone by played a joke or two on him. - So one was played one hot, dusty summer evening when "Uncle Henry" came to church on his two wheeled cart; - Some chap tied his duster tight to his cart wheel, - and it made him angry and it was [horsed ?] about I did the act, - which I never heard of, until two weeks later when the gentleman refused to speak to me. - Well I had to wear off the acquissition [sic] and it took several months and I don't know but what "Uncle Henry" still
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believes it was me; - But it made Mae very angry to have me accused of a small mean trick and I had a deal of fun over that joke, then there are dozens of others. One more darling. - it was about the time you were in Wales, that one evening we had a grand social up on Delavan Lake at the [Devon ?] Club and there it was Mae Van fell in my hands as a professional man. - A severe bite from some animal on her hand, - and of course [nerves ?] develop suddenly on such occasions. But all there for something to tell you of the little jokes, which are many, existing between us. - I can certainly not answer her jokeing at this distance, but can explain most
any you refer to. My darling your dream had poetry in it certainly, - "Up higher and higher" - you know one of our mottoes is: - Alta petens, - Aiming high! I wish such dreams would come to me, but dear, so far the maid who holds the secret combination to the entrance of dream land has failed to visit me since you left. - But I can think wide awake when and wherever I am - of you as my blessing for whom my life efforts have been pledged and accepted.- No one knows but what Miss Fallows may be favored some day, - but if
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She is not, it will never effect our own true affection of which words are too weak and mean too little to express so she can understand. I trust that when I go in early in the morning when calling at [Huzah's, Huzal's ?] for my proofs I can get them and send them on to you. If they are enclosed look them over and decide which you wish me to have finished. Your word is law. Then return them, but show no one the unretouched proofs which are filled with imperfections. Good night now my dear Sunshine, Your ever loving Claire Am very sleepy but am now off for a thought again of Sunshine as I rest my head on the pillow, "Sunshine".
