July 23, 1925

Dear Classmates,

'Woe is me!' Here it is the twenty third of July and the last letter entered in this remarkable Round Robin is dated January the tenth. Am I responsible for this long delay? Well, I must own up to some of it, both from indirect causes and direct ones. Indirectly, because I married a Methodist minister some nineteen years ago and am liable to change my place of residence at very short notice, every once in a short while. After a three years sojourn in one of the delightful suburbs of Baltimore, I moved to Washington again last summer. Doubtless this Round Robin would still be numbered among those missing had I not happened to drop into the church office of my husband's last charge in Baltimore, one day in the latter part of June. There a very hardworking and busy church secretary delivered to me this most voluminous package which she said had come into her hands about a month before. Now I am directly responsible for another month's delay because I have lost all my youthful fondness for letter writing and I have put off the task hoping that the muse that presides over letter writing might come to my aid. But I have hoped in vain, so now in desperation I am going to dust off something and try to hasten this bird of passage on its way.

It is seven years since Robin visited me before and for those seven years I have no eventful deeds to record. All I can say is just seven years of pleasant living, striving to do as Carlyle suggest the duty that lies nearest. Though, in these days of a multiplicity of duties it is sometimes hard to decide just what is the nearest and most important duty. So many and so various things demand attention that I have frequently used this expression in describing my condition 'No matter what I am doing I feel as if I should be doing something else.'

However, now and then, I just forget all the things that have not been done, and all the things that ought to be done, and all the things that must be done and all the things that various people want me to do and just do the thing that I myself enjoy most.

I want to express my pleasure in reading all these interesting letters and say that it has been a source of great enjoyment to have this intimate association for a little while with the charming members of Nineteen Three and their lovely families.

I think it would be a great idea to have the printed letters to keep. The college class of which my father was a member got out a book for their twenty fifth anniversary and it made a very interesting volume. Perhaps we can do something like that for we surely have a wealth of material.

I will tell a little of my own family for those who have time to read it. My husband vies with the many other husbands in an effort to be the busiest man in the world. At present, he is not the pastor of one church but is the District Superintendent of the Washington Methodist Episcopal Churches. The other members of the family are Phelps Jr., now almost fifteen and Lois age nine. Phelps is a real boy, brim full of life and energy and always vitally interested ins something he is doing or making. Lois has about twenty dolls and a couple of hundred paper dolls and says she is going to be a minister's wife.

Happy greetings and best wishes to you all.

Yours cordially,
Clara Robinson Hand