June 1, 1919, From Richard

403
June 1, 1919

Dear Esther:

Owing to the holiday on May 30, and the consequently very heavy mail Saturday, I had not the pleasure of receiving your letter until almost (Sat.) noon. This is a very hot Sunday, in fact it is warm, and I am wondering if your weather is so extremely uncomfortable also. But I presume that you have (or have had) an opportunity to enjoy a car ride thru the breezy air of open country. It is a most exquisite pleasure on such days as these and the chance of good fortune should be appreciated. I was out in a big Cole the other evening and the event reminded me of course of days long since past and forgotten, no doubt.

College life is a wonderful and valuable experience in which, life itself, knowledge, work, and romance are blended strangely together to give a person learning. Learning is not an accumulation of facts, but the creative ability to make a relationship between facts. There is produced a state of mind which is aloof from the incredible number of trifles and small frivolous affairs of so-called men and women. Let us hope it (learning) produces good taste in as many things as is possible for as Ruskin, the great critic of architecture and social life, says; "Good taste is a moral quality". It is an expression of good or bad intellectual and moral qualities.

I am sorry you had to stop your work in order to write to me; who by the way does not consider himself so very important.

I hope to see you during vacation.

Yours Truly,
Richard