Dear Lucile:

Enid, who used to be my secretary, as you know, gets my mail over at Skyrim and reads it to me on the 'phone. There were two letters of importance when your birthday letter arrived. She read yours, and I thought she was reading the other, as I did not clearly hear the beginning. As I listened, I thought 'Golly! I'll send that one on to Lucile!' Then I realized it was not the other letter! Maybe when the outside is stripped from me, and only the inside from deep down is left, your implied description of me may somehow be justified. In the meanwhile, I feel good as a grateful doggie must feel when he is patted approvingly on the head. I do like it, and I do want to be a good little dog — like Yo-Yo!

Here's good luck! I've just heard from Rex Carey that Margaret Carr (now 81), sister of my old pal, Frank Carr, is still active. She knows a lot about me and the family. She is a wonderful woman, a strong, wise spirit — always was. A devout Catholic, she has spent her life in service to others, and is still going strong. What a person! I infer that she is now at the home of Rex Carey, Dalton, Nebraska, for a visit. I wish you could get in touch with her — the last link with my old pal in poetry, Frank Carr. (He had a big, dark-brown voice and he could chant Kipling in a way to quiet the prairie winds!) Old Frank died a year or two ago, and his wife wrote me he was a fan to the end of his days.

How they do die off!! "And the days darken round me, and the years, among new men, strange faces, other minds". Only the days don't really really darken, and the faces are not strange. I won't let them be so.

Here's bad news. Sigurd had his left kidney removed in a Newport News hospital on Dec. 31. We've just learned that it was cancerous, as Dr. Cope here said it was. Too bad he was not trusted!

Love to you, Bower, and old man Stewart —

John Neihardt

Testimonial "dinner" this evening "for a [job?] well done", [they say?]

Neihardt Route 7 Columbia, Mo.
======= Air Mail
COLUMBIA. MO. JAN 1[?] 330pm 1959

4¢ LINCOLN U.S. POSTAGE

UNITED.STATES.POSTAGE FOUR 4 CENTS

Dr. Lucile Aly, 1086 East 21st., Eugene, Oregon.