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note in pencil in top margin [no transcription]

Feby 1st [1923] Dear Mary

  If I ever delay writing as long again, I wont expect you to answer a letter.   The fact is I began one two weeks ago in the mean time I have been to N.Y. and have tried a case and marched around like mad - for what - D-n ?.  Life has moved or rather ? along with me without much change.  I scarcely feel that it is giving yet it is.  Some one is always waiting in the outside office until some one else goes.  and I hear an endless round of troubles & sorrows from morning until night talk of Grand Juries, Courts, Jails, Penetentiaries &c &c until I wish I was on a desert Island where none of these signs of progress how ever ?.  I have been pretty busy in court this month and am now going into the school graft cases (so called) which will probably take forever.  One of my good friends (formerly of a settlement came in yesterday pained that I should defend men accused of graft. and wanted know why I did.  I told