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  • Walter E. Dandy Letter 12/16/1912

    The Johns Hopkins Hospital

    December 16, 1912

    Dear Mother and Father,

    This ought to reach you about Christmas day and I trust it finds you in the best of health which is the thing of prime consideration, then wishing you a very merry Christmas and a happy and bounteous New Year. There are few who maintain so continuously such excellent health and are so far from the major obstacles of life and we have great thanks to the Almighty on his commemoration day. I am sorry we are not spending the day together but such is not always possible and even if you were here it might not be possible.

    When one sees the immeasurable sicknesses which do occur, see them all around, men doomed to die and gradually death crawling on, with their full knowledge and against their efforts and those of the most renowned it makes one think how helpless and insignificant we are, and how thankful we ought to be with the most perfect health with which mankind is endowed. We do not know the whys and wherefores but we can rest assured it is a donated blessing from the laws of a creator greater than we. We have everything for perfect happiness and Christmas should merely serve to intensify its impressions upon our minds.

    I am in perfect health, my work and environment is perfect. What more could I ask. With only the former I could not be handicapped.

    Your allusions to the struggle for existence causing transmitted imperfect characteristics as temper are fallacious. Struggles on the contrary produce strength and transmit it similarly. The hands grow strong from struggle, so does the mind and so does transmissions. The weakest are representations of overfed and over privileged and underworked. So don't accuse yourself it was the product of being spoiled rotten.

    But every person who has no temper has no backbone. There are extremes, but if temper in moderation were not a good quality it would not have been produced. Just look at Mama. Of course she has plenty but she wouldn't take one bit less. Why she wouldn't be Boss without it. See how it counts. What looks like a drawback may ultimately be a blessing and it has not hurt me yet. All I have to do is to cultivate the rough spots. Don't think Dr. Finney has no temper he has lots of it. He wouldn't be Dr. Finney if he hadn't but he has cultivated it to use with greater force in commanding places. Education trains and polishes the rough spots. No there is no such blame anywhere.

    Well, I helped Dr. Finney do a cancer of the breast and another operation yesterday. He is great, but if you don't think he has temper you should hear him when things go wrong. They didn't yesterday.

    Am getting some great work, can't get enough time to do it in. Weigh 160 and am getting fat again. Don't send me any money. I don't need any. When I do I will ask for it, but I am not going to need any. I don't have much expense, only for eating. I get a meal once a week or more but that costs $1 each time.

    You ask about the cost of board. It cost me $4½ a week for board and $8 a month for a room, but what difference about the cost. You can live comfortably and eat for $50 a month at least and what does that amount to. What matter about the cost. You have plenty and I can easily make plenty when I have to. If necessary I can make $2,000 a year any time but the longer I work for nothing, the more that will ascend. Philadelphia is closer to Baltimore. It is only 90 miles away. Boston is 400.

    No there is nothing in the Spiritualist dope, it is ridiculous. Never had a headache, never felt badly, etc. It is interesting, however, to look at the game.

    Well, I think this is all at present. Again wishing you a merry, merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Please extend the same to Mr. and Mrs. & May Todd & the others whom I don't know. They have all been very, very good to you & hence to me.

    Your loving son, Walter

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