[30 Apr 1922]

Sunday

Dear Mother, Father, and Pete:

First of all, Mother, the glasses came in the afternoon mail yesterday and fit very well. I shall have to have them adjusted a little. I think the frame is a little short across the face, but it will do till I get home. My others still haven't turned up.

As usual, I was quite excited yesterday, and sleepy--for a change- and got no work done all day. I counted on working all day today, but the debaters enjoyed Vassar and staid till the 4:13, so that is where my day went. But to begin as the beginning.

The audience was quite small. No wonder--a gorgeous day, a busy week-end, Saturday, and an old subject. But it was a most responsive audience. They were laughing all the time, it seems to me.

The Brown debates were absolutely marvelous speakers. I never hope to be up against a stiffer set of opponents. They were finished speakers. Their last one, Gertsonlauer, is to be their class-day orator and Commencement Speaker. He certainly ought to be, on the basis of ability. They combined splendid oratory with facts. They pulled off only one oratorical figure that I really objected to. Their first speaker compared the F. with a child that cries for a pistol, and of course the child shouldn't get the pistol. So when I got up, I merely turned the figure, and said that they should judge after the facts I gave them, whether it was the child, etc., or the full-grown man demanding his natural right of freedom. And all the audience ha-hahed, which fussed me considerably. And in rebuttal, thinking I was still at Barnard with a speaker still to follow, I asked them to answer three questions, yes or no, and completely forgot I had the last word. But of course that was not disastrous, merely amusing. The judges were Dr. Adams of Yale English dep't, debate coach and teacher of argumentation, Mrs. Whitney, a N. Y. lawyer nd[sic] member of Industrial Commission, supposed to be quite good, and Dr. Denby, President of Packer Institute. The latter voted for Brown. He marked on the stupid basis of points, and they had 26 to our 25. I left out one point accidentally. I wonder what he would have done had I made it! He said, however, that he considered Vassar had by at least 30% the harder side of the question. All agreed to that. Believe me, I did, too. And he congratulated Miss Waller and Mr. Getsonlauder, particularly, for the brilliant work they both did for their sides. You see I wasn't the shining long light I was at Barnard! But Dr. Adams congratulated me personally on "the brilliant rebuttal" I gave. After all, that is where the real shining is. I felt beforehand that my speech had no possibilities in it. In either side, the economic speech is the one that counts. But if I had taken that from Evan she would have had to work out a completey[sic] new speech, and the only purpose of putting me in was because Cowles was weak and Peggy wanted me to do the best with that end of the subject that I could, since it was a boring part of a necessary division of the debate. The subject-matter was that there were capable of self-gov't, by ability and by what they are dong[sic], and that they maintain law and order in the islanders. And of course everything that I said was against my better judgment. My concluding sentences were respectively 51 and 55 seconds long, perfect grammar--so judged and timed by the time-keepers! I spent three of my four minutes of rebuttal rebutting their marvelously