To Clara: My dear precious
June 16, 1929, Friday Noon
My Dear Precious:
With a grateful heart for you and a fond anticipation of many happy days, even weeks, months and years in the very near future, I feel inspired to dispense with reading of the period of the Renaissance long enough to fill my very being with happy thoughts and memories of thee by writing a brief note to the girl of my heart.
Needless to say I love you and appreciate your letters, but it is as true a statement as I could make so I believe in telling the truth sometime — don’t I? I guess when anyone loves another as I love you, just anything from them would be appreciated, especially when so far away, when too, thinking of how long we have been so closely thrown together and in so many wonderful relations. I suppose there is such thing as two persons becoming so nearly one until it really hurts when separated. I presume that is one reason why my being away from you touches me so noticeably. Sweetheart, you need not tell me you mean to be as true as steel to me, I know you are, and you know that is one reason I love you so dearly, for long ago I developed a confidence in you which caused me to trust you as I would myself.
This is one great consolation I have, although far away and I know not what you are doing, but I know all is well and that when my precious heart meets me I shall feel assured of the fact that a true, trustworthy and loving sweetheart will fall into my arms to fill and thrill a heart and soul with gladness and happiness as no other mortal being could.
To love and be loved in an ideal way by your ideal is just about as near Heaven as anyone can get while on this sphere of ours. Precious, you coming into my life is making a better man of me. To be able to trust and be trusted is a standard reached by only a few. A principle which if followed by all would mean an utopian civilization with which to live. Precious, I have very much to feel grateful for, but my dream is and my hopes are that our lives will become more precious to each other as thoughts ripen into actions, habits, customs, convention and character. Precious heart, if I don’t refrain from this thinking, you will have me at S.T.C. for the weekend. I know you will excuse a fellow for such when you know he loves you as I do.
Riley
