To Clara: Precious darling
June 11, 1929 Sunday Morning just after The Special
Precious Darling:
On getting back from our regular S.S. Bible Class, someone at the house informed me of having received a Special from Hattiesburg — you can only imagine how my heart thrilled with joy. Because I felt sure my own Sweet Precious had remembered her own with a Sunday Special — the only way I can hear on Sunday. Clara, I don’t know, but I really believe today’s message was appreciated more than any. Because I thought as I read the one I received yesterday, well it will be Monday before I have the sweet privilege of reading another from my own dear precious, then to my glad surprise, I have this sweet special one today. Precious ____ you said the one thing I have been waiting almost a year to hear — — — that was that you realize now that your past love affairs were not satisfying and that you are now perfectly content and satisfied with this one. Clara, to me that has real meaning. We know that both of us have had past love experiences which entered into our lives more or less and perhaps had some influence on our lives. Such is the natural order of things. In the Great Game of Life all want to do well and all are looking for an ideal. I thank God because of the fact that you hesitated to accept any man as your ideal, until I had a chance to brush the scale from my eyes and see you as you really are. Clara I don’t know but what some Divine will sometime enter into such affairs. Clara, if I had to mark a time when my love started growing for you, it would be the evening you took dinner with me just before my leaving the next day for home Christmas 1927. I remember you wore some sort of a red dress.
Clara, I have loved you from that day.
Where some Divine power seems to have had a hand was both of us coming to Peabody during the same year. Clara, your life has come into my life and made a happy man out of an unhappy one. Today, I want to pen the truth, by saying that if I know love, and finding genuine true love, I know I love you above all human beings and am happy, contented and satisfied because I do, then to know from your heart, directed by your brain and written by your hand, a fact conveying in wonder which has by action been demonstrated many times heretofore than your love for me is the only true, satisfying love you have yet experienced. Clara, all of these thoughts and combination of pleasant memories are filling my heart with tender and touching appreciation to the extent that my “cup runneth over” with joy. I am happy this morning. I pray God that the little love nest which is being consummated in our minds today, separately will soon combine and culminate into a visible reality, and however well and sincere and loving for each other may be today, is in only a gem of a great beginning and that as the curtain is drawn aside and our eyes behold the scenes of future years, my heart’s desire is that with each act in the great drama of life we will find that little love nest growing more and more toward perfection.
Clara, I believe our being apart for these few months will help us to realize just how much we do love each other. I believe I really and truly appreciate you more deeply this morning than ever before. Although, I get blue and lonesome for you and would give almost anything to just hold you near my heart, I can patiently wait a few days longer when I think of what wonderful thrills of happiness will be ours then.
All will be.
Your Riley
