The Clarence Darrow Letters

Chicago, Wednesday, July 18, 1906.

6036 Jefferson Avenue.

My dear Cousin:

Ruby, will you please oblige me by looking over all my previous belated letters and selecting the excuses which seems to you most plausible, to use this time? Really, I don't feel equal this morning to the arduous mental labor of concocting a new one. i just simply forgot, that's all. I believed that you, even you, used that excuse once before. As anywayyour letter arrived one day late (principally since I forgot to go to the P.O. for it on sunday) it makes but little difference.

We packed off Aunt Mary and Aunt Jennie last sunday. As you had remained adamant, and refused to return to Chicago and to your mourning sweetheart of Buffalo Grove, they decided to hasten through Ohio at the rate of 60 miles per hour. They took the same train that we did when we left, and intended to spend the night at the same hotel in Buphalo. Doubtless they have arrived by now. Their address is at the Northwoods Inn, Mirror Lake, New York. We all told Aunt Mary that she would derive more pleasure from spending her vacation in a downtown hotel and running around town all day (I never saw a person who enjoyed staying downtown in heat, cold, wind, rain, and snow from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. the way she does) but she said that she couldn't bear to disappoint Aunt Jennie and went. We have not heard from them as yet. But Aunt Mary says that if you are a nice girl and decide to board with you her again this winter and comfort and please Uncle Oh Gee she will come to visit you on her return about 6 weeks hence. I sent some chocolates with her with which to propitiate you; you may have them when she arrives; I believe that they say that chocolates, like wine, grow better with age. I never investigated; I never had force of will sufficient to keep any more than two hours.

Things are terribly sleepy over here. I got xxx xxx I purchased an album about two weeks ago (did I mention it to you?) and filled it with my postcards -- numbering 463, excluding duplicates, which number about 200 and are to go in another album. Father has extracted his 185 xxx stereopticon views of Rome and Switzerland and is to show them some evening soon; if you'll hurry up you will be in time to see them.

Nothing of interest has happened in the last week with the exception of the departure of the aunts. This place is just now nearly as dull as even Kinsman with her twenty-five or thirty people could be. They still sell chocolates in the old waiting-room where you had your hysterics but I now chiefly patronize Amphlett's, where they also still sell sodas. Aunt Kate and I had a soda there the other evening; and just before the Aunts left we all had a soda in the Portland. The Lake looks as usual, and it were covered with ice and the beach with snow would look as it did on that breezy day when you and I adventured thence. The Park is the same as when you and Beula and Stella and I wandered though out. Sodas are still for sale at the German Building.

We have not yet decided on our future address. Uncle Howard is well and exceedingly busy with studying and writing. Uncle O.G. is here and well. Everyone is well. -- By the way, do ypu know that it is 9 months today since I got your first letter addressed to Europe -- i.e. to London.

One last paragraph, -- Do you know of Catiline? Of course you know; every highly educated country professoressa ought to. He made a great many speeches in the Roman Senate; and he always concluded them, whatever subject they might have been on, with the sentence "Carthage must be destroyed"! Like him, I have closed and regularly shall close my letters with the entreaty --

Return to Chicago!

(Which Herr Wienerwurstgebrat of Buffalogrove duly seconds).

Effusively yours,

Karl K. Darrow.

(7/18/1906)

P.S. Things are liable to be a little diversified during the next week. We now have a dressmaker who takes up the whole parlor

Miss Ruby J. Splitstone,

Kinsman, Ohio