I 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
i.iarch 15, 1955 
Dear Dr. Schmitt: 
tirs. Pearson just called me and read yo^lr telegram to me, so 
maybe another letter can reach you at Denver. Your letter of Sunday 
written on the fey to Seattle came yesterday. 
I think it is just grand that you feel that you have an even 
chance or better with the California people. I®m awfiolly anxious for you 
to get home now. Do you think the Iowa work will take very long? Of 
course, you won't know until you see it, but Mr. Kelly seemed to think 
that he could do it in less time than the Dills were spending on it. I 
wonder how long it will take the California people to make a decision. 
I hope you get the refusal of it, anyway. We would both miss our friends, 
our jobs, and our Washington connections, but I think it would be 
tremendous fun to take over something new and different and make a success 
of it. We'd probably have to work our heads off, and maybe not get over- 
paid for it, but we'd have the satisfaction of making it go (maybe!). 
I'm really very enthusiastic about it. Don't you dare take it without 
taking me, tool 
It is too bad you couldn't take the bus trip through the 
redwoods. While I found it most lansatisfactory last year, I understand 
that the seinrice has been changed and will probably be very much better 
next season. 
Miss Neil has just been telling me her life histoiy. She said 
she has never had to work until recently, and that all she has ever done 
was teach music. Her parents died when she and her brother were rather 
young; when he went away to medical school in the winters, she would teach 
piano. She happened to take a little typing ten years ago and on the 
strength of that she has tried to be a typist the last couple of years. 
She worked with the C.W.A. last year. She said she was secretary to 
a group of doctors for a while some time back, then got sick and had a 
serious operation and was not able to work for a year. By the time she 
was able to go back to work, the doctors had disbanded and had no job for 
her, and she got wdirk with the C.W.A. She is a slow typist, but not bad 
when she gets going. I don't see, though, how she ever did office work 
of any particular responsibility. She seems so very helpless, and bungles 
things so unless she is shown every step of the way every time she has to 
do a job. I feel awfully sorry for such people. They haven't been trained 
to work, and now they are almost too old to learn. I should judge that 
she is around 45. 
