.MTM3NA.MTE2ODQ2

[notation in top margin in pencil: [no transcription] ]

letterhead 140 NORTH DEARBORN STREET CHICAGO

  Jan? 29th  1918

Dear Mary

  It has been a long long time since I have even tried to write you which I hope you will forgive.   I dont know why. not that I have forgotten or was ?unwell? but I didnt.  then too I have been very busy but not so busy that I could not have written.  For three months to a day I have been defending a graft case.  When they tried to get the Chief of Police for grafting with the vice ring - as if it was not better to be able to pay for a little ? than not to have it.  If we could only kill the good people before they kill us  Still if they kill us & live they will breed others who could stand for some freedom - if they breed, which they will.  I wish you could have heard the case with its short witnesses & its long one with its detectives & dictographs & tapped telephone wires. with its stool pigeons & informers ? for immunity & I shut them up in a five hour talk at the end of it  the ? much to the surprise of the town & the disgust of the good.  The list of witnesses would make you laugh ?