18 October 1918 to Leone

Dear Leone:

I received your welcome check today and will give you credit for it after flashing it a few days. I paid your O.E.S. dues which were $3 and charged your account and you are now now a sister in good standing with Mrs. McFarland of cerebrerde (?) fame.

After reading tonight's paper I can imagine that you might resemble a well handled piece of licorice root all shriveled and shrunk from the forest fires. The Chicago Trib. gives more space to it than to this well-known War but as I read further and see that Virginia is saved, I expect that South Carolina and you are still intact barring a suspicion of that delicate fragrance which eminates from the burning livery stable.

Our village is quarantined on account of the “flu”. No movies, dances, church or school. The State Convention of I.O.O.F. was due to open today but was called off which turned away several thousand IOOF’s. One man died here this A.M. and it is rumored that the town is free of it. Bess Mudgett is in bedd and I am gargling my Adam apple regularly.

The papers do not give the number of deaths but it must be fierce. The Mayor Potter said the undertakers were working day and night at Camp Dodge.

We wetn to a box social at the Country Club Thursday eve and a lovely time was had by all. The Owl Club has voted to have 4 or 5 informal dances this winter at the Commercial Hall and won’t it be a Gran’ & Glorious feelin’ - no concrete shirt nor nothin?

We have a female bank just now - six girls and maybe more coming. Dorothy Macaulay is getting to be very good and I understand her sister Mrs. H. Perry wants a job. Our new men come and go so fast I hardly learn their names. I expect the next draft will take two more away.

Deckers are moving away the old barns and they are all gone now except the part of the big one on the crick. They are going to build a stone wall between their lot and Adams. To continue the disconnections - the big National Clay Works - George Winters outfit burnt down tother night. The Northwestern Cement Plant had a fire and Damon Igon had a smoked loss all of which is not conductive to an easy time in the First National Bank Insurance Dept. The Liberty loan Rept me jumping for 2 weeks. They handed me the job of handling the First Ward applications and the cash with it and it's a strenuous work to straighten out a mess that a whole gang has mixed in. We raised over a million dollars in M.C. and I suppose you have heard Iowa was the first state in the US to go over the top.

A Newsboy went by a few minutes ago hollering “Extra” so must be exciting war dope on.

I think I have written enough for this winter. I wrote to Don some time ago and here’s yours. We must conserve Ink in the here war times and I know your sister agrees with me on this point.

Effectively,
Harold