1917-07-15: ~AUDIO~---images---comment---transcript---notes---links---site navigation
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Below is a map that was with this letter, but I very much doubt that the map came with this letter.  There's no mention of the Woods Hole property in the letter, and I can't believe that Alma bought the property in 1917 and waited until 1922 to build.  More likely Eva just stuck the drawing in the first envelope she came across that said Woods Hole.

But this was where the map was found, so I'll keep it here, foreshadowing happy times to come.
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1917-07-15: ​audio---images---~COMMENT~---transcript---notes---links---site navigation
Alma's keeping an eye on the newly widowed Fred - that detail always touches me.
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1917-07-15: ​audio---images---comment---~TRANSCRIPT~---notes---links---site navigation
Woods Hole, Mass. July 15th.

Dear Eva,

I am very glad that you liked the sweater.  I hope that it is a fair fit - there isn’t such a thing as a good fit.  I am at work on one for Anne just now.  I began on Monday and I have it one third done; it is not as fancy as yours - I am putting two stripes across the bottom instead of the blocks because it is quicker and I thought that it would be too late to do her unless I made it soon.  I have had trouble getting yarn.  I shall stop in Boston when I leave here and see if I can get some green.  They do not have any more at Meekins but were sending for some.  They may have it by the time I am ready for it.

I went to Boston on Wednesday and returned this morning.  I was not in Boston long.  Ethel met me and took me out to Wakefield.  I came into Cambridge on Friday and did some reading at Harvard and went to the greenhouses for some material.  I got a little but I got the address of a man in Jamaica to whom to send for some material that I have wanted very much.  The one species that I want most grows there - species of tree fern, I mean.  There is a nice Scotch gardener at Harvard, Robert Cameron by name, and he told me where to write.

Yesterday morning I came to Boston and stayed with Eunice until this morning.  We had a fish lunch at a little restaurant.  We had war bread for supper and bran muffins for breakfast.  Eunice is much excited over the war.  She knows a good many men who have gone.

Robert Jackson is in the training camp at Harvard - the Reserve Officers Training Corps - and he is going to take an examination for a commission.  He has grown up a great deal in the past year.  He came home Friday night after a lot of hard drill and told us a lot about it.  We were much amused when he wound up with the remark “This will make a man of me yet.”

I am glad that you are knitting for soldiers.  What I want to know is how much of it is really used.  They are so wobbly about the directions and seem so uncertain as to what it is that they want that I lost all my enthusiasm about it.  I decided to knit for people that I was sure wanted it and to wait until they had some system about their orders.

I wish that I could go to Cape May but I think that I had better wait until some other time.  I am poor for one thing and for another I want to be with Fred.  I rather had to come here on account of Regina - she couldn’t get her degree if I didn’t.  The reason that I went to Boston this week was that it would not keep me away as long to go now as to go after I left here.  I have to be around here for about five weeks but I do not have to be here steadily.  I wish that I could be with you and Mother but I shall defer that to another time.  You can come and spend Christmas at the Faculty house.  I wish that I could go to Ohio.  I do want to see Margaret and Billy not to mention Will and Kathleen but I can hardly afford to go for the short visit that I would make.  Thank you very much for the invitation to Cape May.

I had a fine time at the Jackson’s.  We went out on a picnic Thursday - out on a rock on Senator Lodge’s estate at Nahant.  It is a wonderful place.  The Evans’s took Ethel and me to a lobster dinner at a sporty restaurant at Suntaug Friday night.  We had a wonderful dinner and we danced a little; we left at 10:30 just as the sporty people in summer furs were arriving.  Bob Jackson said that he went there once and he was poor for two months afterwards.

The swimming is cold here too but it may warm up when the wind turns.  It was fairly warm in the bay for several days last week and the wind turned to the east and the water became very cold.  I went in the morning and it was rather cold.  We go in regularly but can’t stay in long.

With much love,

Alma.
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1917-07-15: ​audio---images---comment---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
1.
What bliss to transcribe a typed letter.

2.
I am at work on one for Anne just now.
This must be Alma's friend Anne Starr, for whom there is a Non-Family page.

3.
Yesterday morning I came to Boston and stayed with Eunice until this morning.
I think this may very well be Eunice Miller, whom Alma knew at Oberlin.

4.
We had war bread for supper and bran muffins for breakfast.

Here’s an article about war bread:
The idea was that white bread - i.e. the nice bread - was saved for the troops. 

In Oregon, for instance, the loaf locally called "war bread" contained 40 percent wheat substitutes, such as corn, barley, or rice flour; another type, known as "victory bread," contained 25 percent substitutes. Those who munched on war bread, readers of the Oregon Evening Herald were told, were "15 per cent more patriotic than the one who eats victory bread."


5.
I wish that I could be with you and Mother but I shall defer that to another time.  You can come and spend Christmas at the Faculty house.  I wish that I could go to Ohio.  I do want to see Margaret and Billy not to mention Will and Kathleen but I can hardly afford to go for the short visit that I would make.  Thank you very much for the invitation to Cape May.
We see Mama Margaret planning to join Eva in Cape May rather than joining Alma in Woods Hole in the following letter:
6.
I had a fine time at the Jackson’s.
This letter made me sure that it was Ethel Jackson whom Alma was visiting in March 1921:
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