Letter from Elizabeth Phelps Reese to May Wright Sewall.

RESSE, ELIZ P JUNE 25 1914

Auzio (Prov. di Roma) 25 June 1914

Dear Mrs. Sewall:

I have just rec your most kind & apprecative letter as also your "Gensis of the International [?]", for both of which favors accept my best thanks. I have only been able in this limited time to give a brief perusal to the work, &, therefore cannot sufficiantly judge of its great merit. I find however that you are most careful & exact in your statements a foot I always appreciate.

It seems almost ghostly to find mention of to many of the old friends I have long missed. Years have gone since I [?] Mr. Peter Taylor who was kindness itself to me in my youth. And the Jacob Bridge all the older generation have passed away I fancy. I cannot but mention that even if the sisters were excellent women, yet, as usual, man's superior opportuni ties for public work made John Bright a figure to remember with joy even among

2/ Some other so-called great men - I have rather regretted. That [?] I did not give expression to my feeling about the men & women I have [?] But deli cacy somewhat imposed its restraints. Then an over busy over troubled life added its own difficultes to sush a [?] As I feel some of these still crowd my horizon while still I am eager to get certain things properly arranged which be they of more on less value to others. Seem to my personal judgement to possess a certain [?] I too know regret.

Like you, I ? valiantly to keep regret at a distance; unlike you I am not faith free enough as you apprear to be entirely to evade this tiresome companionship.

Much of my own activity goes out in just [?] [?] as owns of Saturday last. I know a number of young women who turn to me for encouragement & if this cannot be compassed in a [?] [?] [?], must be given by correspondence.

3/ However anonymous [?] effort is has always been for me to precious opportunity. Probably, many persons wont think I have [?] much time in this way know we nothing of [int?] results and undoubtedly for personal affraid [?] it has little [?]

This little preamble is a little better to place our relationship new, I hope, will be permanent upon a rather mere logical understanding. Your work has been more public than mine - in a world sense but our aspirations have been [?] allied.

There is a note I divined in the "Genesis" in my hurried reading which seemed to me to imply that some of your fellow workers had not been [?] as ready as they ought to be. To give you your full share of the honor due in this initative. As little as I think it worth to care about public recognition, merely as a decisive judgement yet unquestionably I perceive that today one's authority upon the subjects one has carefully studied is increased by

4/ promulgation of the effort attempted [?] as a sociological beginning & yet which has not been properly made known & so escaped its correct appreciation.

I am glad that you will enjoy the society of this friend in Florence. It is very probable that she has come up since my Florentine days. Very likely also that she will know nothing of my life & work there nor of my essaying to help Dr. [Cornause?] in having some of his poor boys taught agriculture on my place at Villa del [Saloiatino?]. Since his death, I fancy, from what I hear from Florentine friends, that the good beginning on the farm up on the hill, for which I interested friends & relations to give money for its purchase, does not now proceed as it ought. I hope the report is exaggerated. I believe the [?] club works more satisfactorily in Florence than in Rome. Here I have [?] joined, although often ? by firends to do so. Some

5/ of the reasons assigned to you for my withdrawal from public work here bore upon this decision. Florence is my very beloved of all cities. Now, many of my old friends have either left or some have died.

I hope some happy opportunities may allow me to make acquaintance with your new Contessa [Cipriaiu?]. It would be pleasant for me to know what special work she now most includes to getting off her energies?

Of late years I have come a good deal into a knowledge of some [?-] ble Swedish women. Only a few weeks ago one dear friend, Mlle [Tysade?] Kleen was staying with me. There is a very extraordinary idealistic ability among some of these women & that side of life [draws?] one very sensibly. I am now interrupted & so will conclude this lenghty epistle tomorrow.

26/ I enclose for a cutting sent me perhaps you may not have seen it. Do not return it to me