Room 16, Schmelz Bldg.
2516 Washington Ave., Newport News, Va.
[July 14, 1918]
Dear Margaret:
Behold my new address!  We moved yesterday.  I have room 16, and an interest in rooms 18, 20, and 22, which will be occupied by Lt. Irwin Smith, Miss Alecia Brown and other law enforcement people.  The rent is paid by the Soc. Hyg. Assoc.  The army has issued me furniture for my room and an army phone.  We are renting a second phone on the city central.  I expect to be quite comfortable, although the building is rather dilapidated in spots.  It needs more cleaning, like most of the buildings in town.
The army will give me a Field Clerk in uniform and I shall have the services of Mr. Embree's private secretary for the next two months while he is in Europe.  Mr. Embree is secretary of the Rockefeller Foundation, so I take it his secretary, Miss Stoughton will be a "hum-dinger."  Miss Wells is down here temporarily.  She is one of the stenographers of the Am. Soc. Hyg. Assoc.  She is very rapid (in shorthand and typing and also in talking) and rather
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highstrung, but she is very faithful and enthusiastic.  She just bubbles with excitement over the work of the law enforcement squad and is almost overcome with awe and admiration for Mr. Stockdale, a low-brow but experienced detective, who is head of the squad.  Mr. Stockdale was in a few minutes ago to show her a large revolver which he took from a colored man last night.  Miss Wells is getting all the thrills of a dime novel.  She seems to like the work down here.  She insists on working, Sundays, holidays, and evenings.
Speaking of thrills--there were several in your last letter.  It always does me lots of good to hear from you and to learn again that you love me.  Of course it will be nice if we have been able to put Gertrude into a career which she will regard as more her own than the one she has followed as a pot-boiler.  I am so anxious to hear that she has fitted into the game and feels that she is making good and will enjoy the work.  I am so glad that she is having a preliminary period of observation and
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study.  Wouldn't it be a joke on her if they should send her here for some experience.  She'd have to listen to her little brother-in-law then.
Miss Alecia Brown is the new social worker here.  They have sent her an ex-school teacher about 50 years old from North Carolina to train in case-work.  Gertrude is one-hundred times as smart and her mind is about 100 years younger than that of this temporary addition to the staff.  Miss Brown almost fell over when the new arrival told her that she never realized that such awful things happened in the world, till three weeks ago.  She also asked her how she learned about such things and had she ever talked about them with men.  Of course the newcomer is hopeless, but we shall have to give her a trial.  I believe she was a next door neighbor to Mrs. Daniels and she may have been recommended by her.  Don't spread this gossip.
I am sending Peggy some coral beads right from the glass factory via Woolworth's emporium and Gertrude can have the blue ones from the same
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source to match her eyes.
I just love your precious comment on "beads."  When you speak of having been "just blue scared" it reminds me of a time when we were sleeping together on the far side (from home) of a roaring mountain stream, and you woke me to tell me that we were all going to be drowned.  But we weren't.  And the chances are a hundred to one that our precious association will survive this war, and that our country and our children will again enjoy peace.  And alone all I wish for a prolongation of mental youth and physical vigor for us both.  It seems as though the risks of being killed or wounded is much less than that of getting serious and in a chronic state of fatigue.  In my present work I am quite serene, perhaps a little lazy.  I haven't begun to write articles or laborious reports.  Without writing and with enough sleep, I seem to be able to do a vast amount of routine without losing ground, especially if the weather is not too hot.
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So I am feeling fine!  Are you?  I could only feel finer if I could be with you.  Another thing helps my state of mind, and that is the memory of how nice you were in Chicago and Idylwilde, and the prospect of seeing you again somewhere and somehow and soon.  It is only 48 days to September first!  Isn't time flying!  Of course I can't say for sure when I shall return to Washington, but I am at least thinking of Sept. 1 as the probable date.  I think Maj. Snow will come to Newport News at the end of the week with Mr. Wickliffe Rose of the Rockefeller Foundation, and then I can get a better idea of future plans.  If I am to stay here long, I shall most certainly want you all here (notice the Virginia expression "you all."  They use it in the south even when addressing one person.).  Won't you write me about your wishes and plans?  How long do you and mother want to stay at the cottage?
Enclosed is a letter from Grace.  John evidently sailed for China on June 29.
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Today is Sunday.  I was planning to spend the morning writing this letter, but as I came up the street I meet Miss Brown and her friend Miss Scott, a social worker visiting from Baltimore.  They invited me to go with them to the Episcopal Church in Hampton and to see the grounds of Hampton Institute.  So I went along.  The church is made of stone and is surrounded by a cemetery, the proper setting for an old church.  The congregation is 300 years old, although most of the people looked considerably younger.  Some people don't show their age in this era of camouflage.  The building is not as old as the congregation.  I suppose the original structure melted away or was torn down.  The service was Episcopal and fairly "high" church.
After the service we walked down to Hampton Institute, the colored institution founded by Booker Washington.  They have extensive grounds and many beautiful buildings, doubtless financed by the friends of the negroes in the north.  There were expansive lawns, and the buildings
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were mostly of reddish brick or brown stone, and they were decorated with ivy.  Everything was spotlessly clean.  Cleanliness was part of Booker Washington's philosophy.  We stepped inside their large chapel.  It is a handsome stone church with a tower.  There are about 900 students in the regular sessions, but the war has cut the male attendance down.  Next Wednesday a Dr. Roman (colored) is to speak there to the Hampton Roads Medical Association (colored) and I shall go to hear him.  He has been added to the Surgeon General's Office (Section on Venereal Diseases) for the purpose of giving lectures to the colored soldiers.
The picture for Champion has not come yet, but I suppose it is on the way and will be here to-morrow (Monday).  Did you ever get a letter asking for the status of my acc't with the First M. E. Church in Sac'to.  I don't think I am stingy in wanting to close up my affairs there.  The delay means 50 cents a week because I shall not have the face not to pay up to the date
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on which I ask for my letter of membership.
Your registered letter containing the bank book and another nice little letter and two checks came this morning.  I am still scratching my sparse scalp trying to make out just where things stand, and I shall soon have it figured out.  Did you draw out the other savings acct and put it all with checking acct?  I think I shall leave all of the Oakland B. of S. acc't in Berkeley until I need to transfer it or use it.  I certainly would not want to open a savings acc't here for only a couple of months.  I'll just let the interest accumulate there.  I suppose we'll leave the children's acct's undisturbed in the same way.  They can buy war savings stamps for a while.
As I have figured it out, I am ahead in the payments to the Life Ins. Acct. owing to the payment for the recent premium to the Northwestern.  The next bill will come in September and I shall just let matters rest till then, keeping the bank book.  There are four Life Ins. bills due in about March, July, Sept, and Oct. and also one Accident Ins. premium.
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I shall follow your advice and send only $150 for a while, but you have more than that coming to you, old Sweetheart, out of our increased income.  So let me know if you want money, as I have a balance in the bank now.  Our expenses will be increased by $10 a mo. storage on our furniture in Washington.  Don't you need an increased allowance?  I hope you will write mother that we can let her have money if she needs it.  How does she happen to be so flush?
Victor writes that Blythe has gone home but does not say whether he was successful in his business ventures.  Meads is rooming with him.  He arranged to have our furniture sent crated to the Security Storage Co., 1140 15th St. N.W. between L and M.  The charge will be $10 per mo for 100 sq ft floor space piled 10 ft high.  Won't it be nice when we can pay rent on space we can use?  Fortunately the rent will not begin until the freight arrives.
With lots of love, Dear Sweetheart.
Wilbur