Letters home to his parents; paper on religion; and two photographs : Beckwith with friends and Branner Hall

Palo Alto, California

March 7, 1923

Dear Father,

I received your last letter today and was pleased to notice that it was written in the middle of the week. I hope you did not write it at that time only because I had asked for money.

I will bring my account book home with me and recopy my accounts for you during vacation as I will have much more free

time then.

A big dance is going on down in the ball room and both of my roommates are there. Freshmen were supposed to put in eight hours work on it but I was excused because I am on the debating team.

Boxing is coming along all right. I have a very fine and interesting man for an instructor. He has been here over twenty years, is a competent instructor in several minor sports, and has the instinct and patience

of a true gentleman.

Tell Grandfather that I am very glad to hear of his steady improvement and am looking forward to seeing him less than two weeks after this reaches you.

I have been unable to send you copies of the "Dippy" for some time since I frequently need to look up articles in back numbers and am keeping a file of old issues, I am sending you a few with my articles marked. I am also sending you the first issue of the consolidation

of two of our magazines.

My debate on the Ruhr Valley occupation came off last Wednesday and my colleague and I won 4 - 2.

I was not bothered by lack of confidence or embarrassment nearly as much as before. I have already started to prepare for my debate with Cal. We had a holiday today and I spent most of the afternoon on it.

I now weigh 140 pounds.

Your loving son

Burnham

{preprinted: Palo Alto, California}

March 18, 1923

Dear Mother,

I have already bought my ticket for the Sunset train which leaves her about 6:00 P.M. & arrives at Los Angeles about 7:30A.M. Friday morning. The Southern Pacific is making special rates so my round trip ticket with a lower berth only cost $27.25.

I begin to get lazy along towards the end of every quarter. I am not doing very much

studying for my finals. I can always tell what I am going to receive in the way of grades and am convinced that I will get two "C"s & two "B"s whether I study hard for this weeks examinations or not. Last night I had dinner with my colleague in the Freshmen debate at his home in Palo Alto and worked on the debate with him afterwards. Palo Alto is a much larger town than I thought as it is about the size of

"Bowling Green." I did not realize what a limited curriculum they have here until I attempted to find an interesting course to take next quarter. I would like to take a course in English Composition, short story writing or essay writing but I find that freshmen cannot take these courses. The same limitations apply to other subjects such as logic, psychology, etc. I see they have a course in Psychical Research & Investigation