%images;]> magbell-03910106 Letter from Mabel Hubbard Bell to Alexander Graham Bell, March 19, 1896, with transcript: a machine-readable transcription. The Alexander Graham Bell Collection. Selected and converted. American Memory, Library of Congress.

Washington, DC, 1998.

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1998/12/21 0004

Letter from Mrs Alexander Graham Bell to Dr Alexander Graham Bell. 1331 Connecticut Ave Washington D. C. March 19th., 1896. My darling Alec:

It is so nice to hear from you so often. Your Oshkosh Speech seems from the newspaper report to have been a very good one. Mr. McCurdy has sent me his steneographers' report of one of your speeches. It came this morning and Daisy read it through but I have not had tize. I had to go to the Congressional Library with Mrs Poe at ten and since then I have been on the go. The only way I get time for reading and writing is by staying up late.

I went cut to play cards with — there is something going on I have felt strange noises several times since I began writing I can't make out whether there is a storm outside or the wood work is cracking somewhere and no one is up to tell me — I am just a little bit nervous!

Well I went out to play whist with your father and mother and I find I was mistaken in supposing that they went to Colonial Beach in April. They don't until near the beginning of June, so I will have to bring up some of my reserve ammunition. It is — even if they do stay through May and you were here, your Company would not give them the satisfaction it would now, because we have very hot weather in May and then you would be so miserable as to be a great dis comfort to everybody and be unable to do any work. There is nothing so provocative of heatiin people as the witnessing the distress of a person suffering from it, perspiring and wiping his head and groaning “Oh how hot it is!” I speak from experience! Then again there is my own unwillingness to stay here after the first of May. Surely when you have been apart so much you can sacrifice a 0005 2 little to be with me.

Mamma and I are going to Baltimore tomorrow to do some dress making and see Mamma's oculist. Mamma warts to have the other eye operated on and to be in the hospital when it is done as she can rest so much better there and I fully agree with her.

Did I tell you of the scrape I got myself into with the young man from the Agricultural Department? No I didn't. It wasn't very bad but it amounted to this, that he Convicted me of not having read, or at least having forgotten the contents of Darwin's Cross Fertilization of Plants, a terrible confession of ignorance. By the way you stand convicted on the same ground. At least why didn't you tell me I couldn't get peas from my window vegetable garden two— the house is shaking — years ago was because they depended on cross fertilization? I am going to try again now. Meantime I think I will go to bed. I don't like being the only person awake in a shaking house.

Lovingly, always yours, Mabel. Enclosure, to which I replied that I hoped for your return on the 30th and that as late as the 1st of May would then be most convenient.