Free A Woman of Independent Means by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

entire membership to an outdoor tea last week, and as a result my social life is now in full flower also.
    Rob still spends more time traveling with the war bond campaign than he does at home. Victory appears close but there are still battles to be fought—and financed—and Rob is finding it increasingly difficult to convince people to contribute to a cause that seems so nearly won.
    We receive many invitations and I accept all of them, with the warning that my husband’s acceptance is only conditional. If Rob is out of town when the day arrives, I go alone. Fortunately, with so many men away at war in one capacity or another, a woman alone is not the social anathema she once was, and I trust this attitude will not disappear when the war is over.
    To be truthful, even when he is at home, Rob prefers to be closeted with a few associates, working for a good cause, than to lend his presence to any social event. Sometimes I wonder what our life will be like after the war. We have traveled in such different directions in the last few years.
    Forgive the smudges on this page, but I have just bought myself a typewriter and I am teaching myself how to type. I began by typing only my business correspondence but I have grown very fond of the sound of the keys clacking to accompany my thoughts and now I even type my laundry list. I feel I am functioning as my own secretary and suddenly see my whole life very objectively as an ambitious and well-planned enterprise. I now make carbon copies of everything I write and last week I bought a filing cabinet so that I can keep a permanent record of all my correspondence. It may sound silly, but somehow as a result of my new typewriter, my life has acquired a sense of order and importance it never had before.
    Darling Totsie, it is so good to feel as close to you again as I did at college. Since marriage, I have made very few friends purely on the basis of my own delight in them. We must try to see each other more often—and preferably without our husbands.
    It is nearly 4 A.M. now. I must end this and try to sleep. With Rob away, there is never any immediate reason to turn out the light, and I have been surprised more than once in recent weeks by an early sunrise.
    Je t’embrasse,
Bess

    June 29, 1918
St. Louis
    Mr. Marvin Hamilton
Vice-President
Midwestern Life Insurance Company
921 Olive Street
St. Louis, Missouri
    Â 
    Dear Marvin:
    Rob will be out of town at the time the next stockholders’ meeting is scheduled so I will be representing both of us.
    Enclosed is the proposed agenda you sent me, with an addendum I drew up yesterday detailing some other matters which I feel should be discussed by the entire board. I have not had much to say at meetings since I became a major stockholder but I have listened—and learned. Now in Rob’s absence, I feel I should speak out when the occasion demands and the fall dividend is a topic that greatly concerns me.
    Best,
Bess
    cc: Robert R. Steed

    July 7, 1918
St. Louis
    Dear Cousin Josie,
    I am glad you liked the lap robe. But you should not have been surprised that I remembered your birthday. There is tangible evidence of you and your family throughout our home now. We eat at the table where you shared so many meals with your mother and father. I am writing this letter at the desk where you so often sat to write me. Our lives have blended now and I would like to think that we are as much a part of yours as you are of ours.
    At my insistence my mother-in-law has moved to St. Louis to share our home. She keeps your old piano in her room and gives daily lessons to the children. Their love for her makes them more diligent pupils than they would be otherwise, I am sure, and even little Eleanor, who is not quite five, goes dutifully to her grandmother’s room every morning to practice her scales. In the afternoon the boys practice and it is only in the evening, when their patient teacher sits down to play, that recognizable