paper. They acknowledged receipt of the ais. but that is all I have 
heard since I sent it. Drechsler is no longer on the board of 
editors; a man named Stevenson from Plant Industry takes his place. 
We have had our usual jumble of weather. Inauguration Day 
was gray, with occasional bursts of sunshine, but no rain. It was 
windy and quite cold. I did not go to the Capitol, but listened to 
the ceremonies over the radio all monning. In the afternoon I went 
over to Pa. Ave. at 19th St. and saw about three-fourths of the parade. 
I got so cold then that I had to go home and thaw out. The last couple 
of days have been clear, but extremely cold, with an icy wind quite 
worthy of South Dakota. I’ll be glad when spring comes. 
Mr. Richards was down for a few days; just went home Thursday. 
He and his sister came down last Saturday for Inauguration. They, I, and 
another young man went to the Inaugural Ball. It was a thrill of a 
lifetime for me, and I had a wonderful time. The sister went back the 
next day, but he dnyed on and did some vrark on the District collections 
upstairs. He has his District list about done. It is rather larger, 
and represents more work, thah you and he thought at the beginning. 
He looked at the Bartlett mollusks that we have, but he couldn’t work 
on them upstairs, and he and Mr. ShooEaker decided it would be best to 
wait until you get back to arrange about his taking them. He said he 
wouldn’t have time to work on them for a few weeks anyway. I guess 
he manages to keep pretty busy. He still works on the collection be- 
longing to the woman in Trenton, and he says that her interest seems 
to continue and that the arrangement will pro]3ab].y go on indefinitely. 
He also puts in considerable tLme at the Academy, too. He’s wise to 
keep himself bu^, anyway. He didn’t seem to be so terribly low as he 
was earlier in tiie year. He has had some lectxire engagements which 
have paid something, and is going to sell some of the material he 
collected in Cuba. 
We don’t have Dr. Longley’s addres, so I can’t write to him. 
I suppose we could write to Baltimore and ask to have it forwarded. 
Do you want me to do that? . 
I suppose you’ll be seeing newspapers from time to tiiae, so 
you ivill xnow what’s going on. Roosevelt has closed tiie banks all 
over the country — they’ve been clesed all this weex, but the solid 
ones will start opening again Monday under certain Treasury regulations. 
Roosevelt has asked for authority to reduce civil and military salaries 
and veterans’ compensation. He is likely to get what he wants, and he 
is planning to reduce our salaries 15 per cent. He vail do away with 
lafet year’ s economy law, reduce salaries not to exceed 15 per cent of 
our base pay (before the 8-1/3 was taxen off last year) and the reduction 
will go into effect the next month after the bill is passed. It will 
last for the remainder of this fiscal year and all of next. The Federal 
Employees Union, or whate'S'er its name is, says it will not oppose the 
