rld of electricity is boundless. You have as much right
to enter in as anybody, and far more probabilities than most persons
that you will find something worth while. We are all anticipating your
home coming for holidays and expect Bauer to come with you.
Affectionately your father.

"PAUL DOUGLAS."

Walter's mother wrote in much the same way and cheerfully urged him to
take all the disappointing things with hopeful equanimity.

"The longer I live, the more I find the real joy of life consists in
doing our best with God's help and leaving the results with Him. Of
course we all like to get results out of our efforts. But we forget that
results always do follow honest effort, only they are not always the
results we expected and wanted. No doubt, boy, you feel like saying to
us at home, 'Yes, it's easy for you to sit there at your ease and deal
out calm chunks of sympathy to me and tell me not to worry or feel bad,
but if you had worked as hard as I did you wouldn't find it quite as
easy to be happy over this disappointment.'

"Well, we confess all that, but your mother doesn't want to see her son
give up and go down to defeat from one or two or a dozen or even a
hundred blows. You have had the joy of making the lamp (after you
cleared your soul by confession to Bauer), and you know that your brain
works at its best along inventive lines and you know the field of
invention, especially in electricity, is limitless. Your mother says to
you, we feel proud of you and we will feel doubly proud if you will
learn to take this disappointment cheerfully. Don't be a baby over it.
Be a man. The tests of manhood are not found in the easy, but in the
difficult things of life.

"The great thing after all, is to live up to the high calling. I don't
care much, Walter, whether you ever invent anything or not, although I
wish you could find out how to make a machine that will take off a
woman's hat and hold it in church so that she can take care of her hymn
book, her Bible, her gloves, her pocket book, her fan, her umbrella and
her handkerchief, but if you never discovered a single secret of nature
and discover the secret of a useful life, I would be and shall be the
happiest of all women, for that is my ambition for you and always will
be.

"Be sure and bring Bauer home with you. We are all interested to see
him.

"Lovingly,
"MOTHER."