Dear Classmates:

Robin came to me yesterday afternoon and before I went to sleep last night I had read every letter. Now it is early morn and I am writing while I have the chance. Sunday and the rest of the household is sleeping. You see I have one of the marks of age, waking early, and that was so foreign to me in my college days.

Robin's last visit was payed to me in Georgia but just when I do not recall but it was prior to June 1934 for then I left Georgia after 27 years residence and came to join my sisters and mother in New York. The depression got us.

How very proud and congratulatory I am of you who have acquired GRANDMOTHERHOOD. It is the great goal ahead of me but not yet in the offing. My mother has recently her first great-grand-child and grand-daughters and daughters don't count any more. Aren't we lucky so many of us to have our mothers still. I enjoyed hearing about your mothers so will tell about mine. Mother flew from Washington to New York after she was 80 and says that is her favorite mode of travel. She can beat the best of us at contract, knits and sews, and still makes me walk a chalk.

That reminds me of what Mabel W. had to say about discipline or rather its lack. And if I am to believe what mothers of school children tell me, this new progressive education has caused the extinction of discipline. Not long ago I heard my brother tell our mother that the thing he was most thankful to her for was teaching him obedience. At a meeting last year at Town Hall Club I heard a child training expert from Cleveland tell the Parent Groups of the New York Churches that, 'Unless children learned to obey before they were three they would never do do.'

I have corrected Rosalie's dates for I was present in 1905 when she wedded the present Mayor of Pittsburgh and I am sure there were no daughters or granddaughters then. The news was so interesting that we will have to excuse the subtraction of thirty years from the dates. Let's say she was very busy and not that she is getting to forget dates, for what ever years she may have acquired so have the rest of us.

At fifty I rejoiced at the perspective I had on life and felt I was just at the understanding age and ready for life. Since then I spent ten dollars of hard earned money for an interview at a Business Clinic in New York to be told that I was fit for no gainful occupation in the city. I made that money on a temporary job at the Medical Center during that awful blizzard of 1935. During that summer I changed my base of operations and went to Summer School and studied Library Science and Typing hoping to get into something in Washington. Being beyond the age of Civil Service I tried openings not under it but my life expectancy was not great enough to hope to get to my numbers on the various files for they ranged from #37542 to #55025.

In October 1935 I was called to Garden City by the death of my sister Anne and I have been here since caring for her home and family. I have run into quite a number of Goucher women but not one of 1903. One night last winter being caught in a traffic jam in the middle of Fifth Ave. at 42nd street I looked to see the cause and there touching shoulders stood Madesin Phillips. (Not the cause of it, just the victim as I.) I called her by name and she did not remember me even when I told her who I was. Had better luck this Spring when I saw Mary Hough at an AAUW meeting at Adelphi. I had not seen her since our graduation day but when I called her name she not only remembered me but covered me with kisses. So don't think if I see any of you on the streets and by-ways of New York I will not recognize you.

I miss very much my club, school, and church work which I have had to give up but now and then get hooked in on the letter here in this beautiful Cathedral City. You would not believe it of me but I walk miles each day selling books and it has been very good for reducing my flesh and fattening my pocketbook. I thought of using a bycicle as Florence Carmine says she does, for I cannot drive a car, but feared the effect of my prospects.

The accounts from you many travelers have been most enjoyable and I hope Nell Talley will write as fully of her trip as Florence of hers. I sympathized with the sufferers from floods for I have always lived at the junctions of floody rivers, till now. I hope the government can do something about it. I approve many of the trials the Administration is making. I feel it is better to have tried and lost than never to have tried at all. I have my Social Security Number along with the other workers.

To bring my family history up-to-date I submit the following. My son has his M.A. and has done two years work at the U. of Wisconsin on his PhD. My daughter has been secretary to Dr. Ogburn at the U. of Chicago for three years. Mr. Reynolds is in Georgia and I hope the next time you hear from me I'll be there too.

I am not the best typist but I know you'd rather overlook the mistakes than try to read my writing which has not improved with age. But it will disprove the adage that, 'You can't teach an old dog new tricks.'

My love to each of you , those whose letters have preceded mine and those to follow. I hope the following ones reach me someday-

Sincerely,
Mary Taylor Reynolds

P.S. I added a postscript but when Thyra's letter came thought better of it and so have obliterated it. In less than a week's time Robin will be on its way.
MTR