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OSCAR MEYER, PRES. W.C. BOTH, VICE-PRES. ALLAN MILLER, SECY.

Meyer Both College of Commercial Art N.E. CORNER MICHIGAN AVE AT 20TH STREET Chicago

Meyer Both Company ILLUSTRATORS LITHOGRAPHERS ENGRAVERS PUBLISHERS

Detroit, Michigan May 15, 1920

Dear Children:

Another of those pleasant surprise letters that mean so much to me came this morning. It is now a few minutes after midnight and I really ought to be in bed but I feel like saying a few good night words first.

In the morning I will hunt out those films for Captain Sherman. I wanted to get them to him ever since I learned of the death of his wife only I was afraid that he had left California. I have always thought a great deal of Captain Sherman and am glad to be able to give him these films. Then there is also a bond of sympathy with him in the fact that he thinks so much of you.

The pictures that you enclosed in the last letter were all right. Remember that there are none of the Grandys barred from taking lessons in drawing. I think that I will enjoy it and I hope that I can make it interesting enough for all of you that you will keep it up till you get so that you can earn some of the big money that commercial artists are earning these days. This is not exactly a play proposition you know but is a plan I have based on the hope that I can make you children always sure of a good clean way of taking good care of yourselves in event that this ever becomes necessary. The first lesson and a little material upon which to do it should have reached you before now and I can imagine how some of your evenings are being spent. All I wish is that I could step in once in a while and help you along.

You see children you have been the means of teaching me a great big truth. It is not the making of money or the getting of things for ones self that does a person the greatest good but it is in trying to do something for someone else, for some one that you love, that you get the greatest happiness. People with children of their own do this both as a duty and because they naturely [naturally] want to and they grow up normal people because of that fact. But the old maids and the old bachelors must do something to make up for their lack of some one close to them for whom they are responsible. So the old maid get a cat and the bachelor, perhaps the most selfish of the two, gets his pipe and there you are. Neither one of them are worth a continental. I am selfish enough to wish to escape their fate and besides that I do love you.

Yesterday I received a letter from Pasadena. Not a letter exactly but a announcement of the marriage of Marguerite De Laney, the girl I went with a little while I was out there. Ours was just a friendship although I did get to think a great de deal of her and of her people. So I am glad to hear of her marriage if it only turns out that she has found as good a man as she is a girl.

And I looked under the stamp. And I liked what I read there. Once I wrote to a girl and told her to look under the

Last edit about 1 year ago by Gilb Museum of Arcadia Heritage
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stamp and when she did all she read was "was it hard to get off." That was a mean sort of joke wasn't it. And she took nearly half an hour to steam it off when all she had to do was to hold it up to a strong light just as I did yours.

Every time I go into a moving picture show I see some picture that has been filmed in California and it makes me homesick to get out there again. It is only a matter of time amd [and] business now. How long I can not say but I think that I will be here till after Christmas at any rate. In the fall I should make a great deal of money here and I should stay here till I can take full advantage of that probability. It takes money to live in California you know though it can not cost any more than it does in Detroit. This is the most expensive city in the world in which to live. I costs me from fifty to seventy cents a meal for the plainest sort of food and I get up from the table hungry still many times.

Now it is a quarter of one and I must go to sleep. I will stay at the studio tonight. I like it better here than in my room even though I do sleep on hard boards here and in a good bed there. At first I could not sleep very well on so hard a surface but now I have become accustomed to it so that I like it. It does seem strange for a man to pay for a high priced room and then sleep on pine boards but I guess I am a strange duck in some ways as that.

Morning and nine-fifteen at that. I had a plenty of sleep after all. Now I will go out to some restaurant and get my breakfast and then I will read a lecture on color. Then while these ideas are all fresh in mind I will paint for awhile on a large painting that I am making. It is of "The Tourist". An ex-service man is seen knealing at the grave of his friend on a battle field in France Just a lone cross in an out of the way spot. The red poppies are everywhere and he holds one in his hands while dimnly seen beside him is the shadowy presence of the man that died for his country there. It is quite effective and I want very much to get it done before Decoration Day. You know that the American Legion has adopted the French poppy as their flower.

I am also doing a portrait of a girl, from life, and it also is coming along fairly well. I have another one in mind to be made for use as a magazine cover. If I can get started on that line of work I can go anywhere I wish and send my work to the publishers I wish no matter where I am. In that case you know where I will be part of my time, don't you.

This is about the end of this page so I will have to stop the letter. That is, if I am to leave anything to tell at some other time.

With love from uncle Fred

Last edit about 2 years ago by abrorrer
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Detroit Michigan May 25, 1920.

Dear Alice:

The letter that I wrote several days ago is still waiting to be mailed so I just now got busy and hunted up those films so that you can give them to Captain Sherman. I wish now that I had taken more kinds as I did intend to at the time. These are very good ones and I am glad to be able to send them to him.

Last night I was so lonesome and so disgusted with Detroit that if I had been free to do so I think that I would he have caught a train to California or somewhere just so that it was not Detroit. I think that this is the most selfish city in the world. It is for the most part made up of people who value the dollar more than they do personal comfort or the rights of other people. They are mostly foreigners and I am very glad that you are where you do not have to come in contact with them.

I am expecting to here [hear] from my classie little class in California soon. I am anxious to see how you can draw. Perhaps you will find that this first lesson is a little hard but that will not hurt. Just do it as well as you can and send it to me. Then I will know better what to send to you next.

Tonight I have a class of grown ups here. Tomarrow night I go to a meeting of the American Legion. Wednesday night to the Air Service Veterans Club. Taken all together It will be a busy week. There will be a night school on Friday and the day class of children on Saturday. I do not have very much t time for mischief.

Yesterday I watched them make movies of this Armenian general that has fought the Turks for more than twenty-five years. You may see the film some day. At the last meeting of my American Legion post we were addressed by General Boynton, who has fought in sixteen wars. He was in the first battle of the Marne and his story of that fight was the best told and the most aweful story I ever heard. Heis the man that Richard Harding Davis used for his Captain Machlin. Next week the Generl will tell us about some of his experiences in Mexico.

I made a poster for the Legion and am also doing some rather large oil paintings.

Must get back to work now so goodbye till I hear from you again. Love to all my girls,

Uncle Fred.

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