First, Grace had to take care of that previous relationship. “Bill” — I wish I knew his last name — seems to have come up from Texas to see her in Louisville.

“One of the hardest things I ever had to do was to tell Bill goodbye,” she wrote in a note to herself. “It is almost 2 o’clock now and I imagine his train is just leaving. Last night when he asked me if I was footloose and fancy free I told him about my interest in Jimmy. He made it easy for me by his sympathetic kindness, but later he showed me how hard it was after all. I have never seen anyone as sweetly honest as Bill is. All my life I shall be grateful for his friendship and for his love.

“As he left today Bill made this request: ‘If I don’t see you again, tell the young man I think he is getting the thing nearest to perfection on this earth and to govern himself accordingly.’

“He’s gone now. I wonder when we shall meet again.”

Grace turned her attention to the wedding date. She wrote to a friend that Dad was yearning to be married sooner than they had agreed upon, and that she had resisted the change at first. “After we had been together, and after I had talked things over with him and with his mother, somehow I decided that I wanted to go ahead myself. There are so many things in favor of our going ahead — indeed almost as many as those I had thought prevented our doing it now. He will have a raise in salary when he is married, and he will be so much happier than he is now — at least that’s what he says.

“The two things that have been in my mind as paramount objections are the fact that I will have so little money, and that I hate to leave my work so soon after Dr. Sweets brought me all the way from Texas and gave me a position in the office.”

Shortly before their wedding, she wrote a long letter to Dad recounting a lunch conversation she overheard between two women she didn’t know who were seated at a table nearby.

“Apparently, they had not seen each other for several years, and this luncheon engagement was sandwiched between a trip to Yellowstone Park, Seattle, Vancouver, lower Canada and the Great Lakes which the single woman was taking beginning Sunday, and the very busy life of the married woman. They had grown up together in a small town, both had become successful in their work, and each was still interested in what the other was doing in her life.” The married woman was a writer, completing a biography. “Miss Iva, not as pretty, yet more vigorous, teaches foreign languages of an indefinite sort in a university or college, probably at Lexington.

“Each had her own ambitions in life, the married woman to finish her book and get her mother settled in some resort in Virginia; the single one to take this trip which would be her first pleasure trip since 1930 and to really enjoy herself on the money which she was spending. They spoke of some books they had read, some of the things each had done this past winter — other little and important things. Nothing was unpurposeful in their entire conversation. Their lives must be well-ordered.

“And why was I grateful? I think it was because of the impression they gave me. I have heard so many table conversations that consist of nothing except trivialities. So many people discuss people. These two women were examples of two people who were living carefully and busily. They were doing something with their lives and were achieving more than they probably realized, not because one was a writer and the other a teacher, but because each was apparently trying to do her best and make the most of what she had.

“Whenever I have the feeling that I am not worth much, that my life has had little direction, that I am accomplishing little, I can find a great deal of stimulation in something like this. What others are doing, what use they are making of life, their outlook, how broad is their life — all of these things are in a great sense a challenge.

“How great a relief, and what a sense of security, it is to realize that one has within himself that which will stimulate and challenge and re-invigorate. To have within, a source of mental and spiritual energy — that helps tremendously, doesn’t it?”

Grace seems suddenly to become aware that Jim may not know what to make of this. “Thinking back over what I have just written, the thought comes to me that I must often sound like someone who is just discovering what life is like. These impressions come to me so vividly at times that I feel the strongest urge to put them down and see what I can make of them. I hope you will realize that I have thought through much of my life, more than some things I say might indicate, but nevertheless, something is always giving me a surprise. I thrive on thinking through some impressions and experiencing for myself, and in trying to figure out their meaning for me and others, I like to tell them to another person.”

Then comes a new topic — beginning with a paragraph that makes me itch to shout, back across the decades, “Mother! WAKE UP!”: “Today I filed some more material for Dr. Sweets, and in some of the items I came across a folder on ‘The Minister’s Wife.’ In it were three articles written by wives of ministers who were discussing the attitude some people seem to have toward that part of a minister’s household. Somehow I had never thought so much about being ‘different’ just because of the man you married — I don’t want to be so much and I really don’t see much need in it. I am copying, when I have a stolen opportunity, these articles, and I’ll send you carbons so you can see what I have been reading — perhaps you’ll tell me to throw it away and forget it.

“I love you very much. Each day I want to love you so much again and I always do.”

Next among her papers is a clipping from a booklet called “Typing Tips,” from December 1935, featuring this ditty called “Success:”

“Once upon a time I planned to be

An artist of celebrity;

A song I thought to write one day,

And all the world would homage pay;

I longed to write a noted book, —

But what I did was learn to cook.

For life with simple task is filled,

And I have done, not what I willed.

Yet when I see boys’ hungry eyes

I’m glad I make good apple pies.

— By Elizabeth A. Thomas

Grace put a checkmark by the third verse (italicized here)

I am puzzled. This was published two years before she married. Why did she clip it and why keep it among her papers

And when did she add the checkmark?