I put my thesis up to him strong and got one of the most encouraging and stimulating receptions I have had.  He took me in to meet his wife, and said:  ’This young man has stimulated and aroused me greatly.  We must get his thesis formally before a group.’” Later, from New York:  “From seven-thirty to eleven-thirty I argued with Dr. A.A.  Brill, who translated all of Freud!!! and it was simply wonderful.  I came home at twelve and wrote up a lot.”

Later he went to Washington with Walter Lippmann.  They ran into Colonel House on the train, and talked foreign relations for two and a half hours.  “My hair stood on end at the importance of what he said.”  From Washington he wrote:  “Am having one of the Great Experiences of my young life.”  Hurried full days in Philadelphia, with a most successful talk before the University of Pennsylvania Political and Social Science Conference ("Successful,” was the report to me later of several who were present), and extreme kindness and hospitality from all the Wharton group.  He rushed to Baltimore, and at midnight, December 31, he wrote:  “I had from eleven-thirty to one P.M. an absolute supergrand talk with Adolph Meyer and John Watson.  He is a grand young southerner and simply knows his behavioristic psychology in a way to make one’s hair stand up.  We talked my plan clear out and they are enthusiastic. . . .  Things are going grandly.”  Next day:  “Just got in from dinner with Adolph Meyer.  He is simply a wonder. . . .  At nine-thirty I watched Dr. Campbell give a girl Freudian treatment for a suicide mania.  She had been a worker in a straw-hat factory and had a true industrial psychosis—­the kind I am looking for.”  Then, later:  “There is absolutely no doubt that the trip has been my making.  I have learned a lot of background, things, and standards, that will put their stamp on my development.”

Almost every letter would tell of some one visit which “alone was worth the trip East.”  Around Christmastime home-longings got extra strong—­he wrote five letters in three days.  I really wish I could quote some from them—­where he said for instance:  “My, but it is good for a fellow to be with his family and awful to be away from it.”  And again:  “I want to be interrupted, I do.  I’m all for that.  I remember how Jim and Nand used to come into my study for a kiss and then go hastily out upon urgent affairs.  I’m for that. . . .  I’ve got my own folk and they make the rest of the world thin and pale.  The blessedness of babies is beyond words, but the blessedness of a wife is such that one can’t start in on it.”

Then came the Economic-Convention at Columbus—­letters too full to begin to quote from them.  “I’m simply having the time of my life . . . every one is here.”  In a talk when he was asked to fill in at the last minute, he presented “two arguments why trade-unions alone could not be depended on to bring desirable change in working conditions through collective bargaining:  one, because they were numerically so few in contrast to the number of industrial workers, and, two, because the reforms about to be demanded were technical, medical, and generally of scientific character, and skilled experts employed by the state would be necessary.”