My Dearest Margie: September 1, 1940

My Dearest Margie:

Hold on to your seat Pug because here comes the dope. My train schedule won't be worked out until Tuesday, but my plans seem to be completed. I will arrive in California in December and should be in Los Angeles about 10 days or so before Christmas. I will have to leave before Christmas to get to Ft. Worth but doing it this way I will have more time in LA and I might be able to work in a little vacation then and have more time to spend with you. The plans are about like this. Leave Tuesday night for Manhattan, Kansas arrive noon Wednesday the 4th. Leave Saturday the 7th and arrive in Denver Sunday the 8th. Leave there about Friday the 13th arrive back in St. Louis, Mo on the 15th or 16th. Leave there about Sat the 21st and get into Moscow, Idaho Tuesday 24th. That takes care of my rushing duties and I start on my regular visitation on the 29th or 30th. I take in Wash. then come back to Montana, take in the two chapters there, then to the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, and then Alman and heaven.

Sort of a lot of traveling, isn't it but I think it is probably best this way and then the last wait won't be so long. This will also give me more time to see you. There will be San Francisco, home and possibly Ft. Worth if it can be worked out. Of course, as I say, this can still be changed until I get my tickets and on the train, but I hope that it works out like this. However I will probably go nuts waiting that long to see you. Also darling, if you have time you will have to write twice a day and at least once so I will have letters to read at each chapter. If I didn't I would probably get on a West bound train for LA. Your letters letting me know of your love and being able to hear from you are the only things that keep me going. You can't realize how much I love you because its beyond all material conception and will live on forever.

But darling, I get so worried at times. Your last letter telling me how people talk about you and Barb, and Gaston doubting our sincerity, etc. must make it awfully hard on you. It's hard on me too because they can say things that they know aren't true because I am away. If I were there I could prove to you anything they say about me and Barb being engaged and you being second fiddle is a pack of lies. At times I can't bear thinking of you having to take it alone because the circumstances are unusual, and it's true not many people saw us together and for that reason they love to enlarge on their imaginations.

Pug dearest, you wearing my pin is the finest thing that ever happened to me and I want you to know that embodied in it is my love for you, which is greater and higher than any love could ever be. You don't know how hard it is for me to have to stay away and not be able to prove it to everybody at home, but believe me I will just as soon as I can get back there. Without you life wouldn't be worth living and if I lost you because of the idle talk that people can think up, I would probably wipe out the whole campus full of them. I'm not worried about losing you because I know our love is too deep for anything like that to happen I just don't want any doubt or misgivings about our love to spring up. I know people will try to say it happened too quick for you to really know, but we know that isn't true and Pug I intend spending the rest of my life to making you happ, and to never regret taking my pin.

Starting this month I"m really going to save my money. At least $90 a month goes into the bank. The only time there will be less will be around Christmas when I have clothes and presents to buy.

The clippings you sent me were swell except that one of them would have to have shell and Morton in it. Boy! will they have a good time talking about is. That old bag, she isn't worth an old cigar butt.

I hope I can be sending pictures home soon. You pick out a nice book and send me the bill. They haven't found my film yet but they had better or I will sue for plenty. I had shots of the loveliest girl in the world on them, and only a couple of million would compensate for them being lost. Then I could retire and I wouldn't need any pictures cause I wouldn't let her out of my sight except for a few minutes at a time. (Guess who? )

Foreman is taking us out for a farewell dinner tonight so I have to close and get ready. But please remember Pug you have always been the only one for me and always will be. I have always held to our high ideas and please believe me when I say you can always trust me completed no matter how far away I am.

For ever ours darling,
Jim

P.S. If you get this Tuesday, write me next at the SAW House, Manhattan Kansas.