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  • Walter E. Dandy Letter 10/20/1913

    The Johns Hopkins Hospital

    Baltimore, Md.

    October 20, 1913

    Dear Mother and Father,

    Well I have had a good laugh over a pretty serious matter I guess. Did the spiritualist prognosticate that too? It is mighty good of you to bother about a girl for me, but when you consider the difficulty of pleasing me in most trivial things, I must congratulate you and the onerity of your burden. It is about the highest compliment you could pay the girl because if you think she would satisfy all my requirements of fanciful and almost superhuman qualifications and even more if she satisfies yours it does seem that she is almost immaculate. But seriously what could I do with her?

    You say I have nerve to delve in the stockmarket but I still lack a little of the nerve which you had at my age when you asked a young lady to come 5000 miles to marry you on nothing and which you now suggest that I duplicate. I must confess I shrink. I haven't received any picture yet, but I feel that regardless of qualifications, it would be unjust to entangle any girl in the uncertainties of my future, bright as I think they are. I am going to be as independent as you were forced to be and not marry until I can keep a wife without any financial assistance, although knowing as I do that it would give you great pleasure to give financial help.

    I must confess there is a feeling of curiosity to see a girl which meets with your unqualified approval but I am afraid you had better go slow and not make any promises which might militate against her welfare. I am afraid on the other hand that you are no judge. By this I mean you judge Miss Cranston from a hypercritical viewpoint and she must be superhuman to stand it, but you know you are no reliable judge of me, you give a girl an entirely erroneous view. You can't see anything but good in me, you burn up the bad things (as you did that prize notice) and you look at the good things through a magnifying glass; how can that be fair? Think of your responsibility to the girl. What appears a balance to you would be an overwhelming lack of balance to an unbiased observer. Did you ever think of this? Who wouldn't be inveigled by your glowing accounts of accomplishments of your boy, as I know only too well you are capable of and it takes more than my power of persuasion to desist you. The worst part is, people believe you owing both to your powers of eloquence and to their confidence in your sincerity (also to your persistence!).

    Well to talk of matters a little more blasé. I just sent an article off the other day through Dr. Halsted. Dr. Howland, Professor of Pediatrics, in whose department we did part of the work, submitted the paper to him at my request. I thought it would please him to have me express my confidence in him by asking him to be the carrier of such a weighty! paper. Dr. Howland himself was very much pleased with the paper and said it was one of the best ever turned out here and was proud that his department should get the honor of part publication.

    Now you won't tell all this stuff will you? If you do have to get it out, tell the milkman, who won't have a practical burden imposed.

    Well Dr. Halsted from indirect accounts which I received through Dr. Howlands assistant, was tremendously impressed with the practical applications which the results portended, that he gave a very glowing account of me to Dr. Howland and even went so far to say the department was very fortunate in having me on the staff, and that I was one of the brightest men on the staff. Very unusual for such a reticent person as Dr. Halsted. He even told me one day that he was very strongly impressed with my last paper which he took to Germany and said the Germans were very much pleased over it.

    I guess I told you that he told Dr. Bloodgood that I was one of the best men on the staff. That was last summer. These things coming from such a high source as Dr. Halsted and from such a hypercritical person and one with relatively few favorable impressions are very gratifying and make me feel that things may yet be better for me here in the long run. It is surprising the number of people to whom the professor has told of my excellent paper of last year. It will come out in German. Dr. Halsted had it translated.

    My big paper on hydrocephalus will come out in all probability in England in the best neurological journal in the world. It is called "Brain." At least we have picked this as the place owing to the fact that it is the very best journal. We don't know yet whether it will be accepted yet.

    Am getting some very good work now though it could be better. I did an appendix and a rupture and several small cases last week. Last night a man was struck by an engine and his face torn to pieces and skull fractured and arm broken. His nose and both lips were torn wide open and folded back like leaves of a book. Out of these pieces I made him a new nose, like putting parts of a puzzle picture together, and by using about 100 stitches and spending 2½ hours. Got him patched up and a good nose and lips again.

    The pictures of the Suffragette arrest which you mentioned, are in yesterdays Sun which I will send you. They have refused to let Mrs. Pankhurst land here, which I think to be just right. How could anybody sympathize with such a fool. She threatens to starve. Why worry, let her do it, everybody would be better off. Think of having her for a wife and mother.

    Your loving son, Walter

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