"Your . . . letter . . . arrived just as we were plunging into our Semi-Centennial celebration. The festivities ran on into the June Commencement, and meanwhile I was myself retiring after forty years of College work, the recipient of many courtesies, and with it all my class had a reunion, my dear old collie died and my closest human friend was ill--so that altogether I had to neglect my desk until it looked like a snowdrift.
". . . I have not signed your beautifully typed copies of America the Beautiful. As you will see by the printed substitutes, I am trying to establish the later text of the third stanza, and your version followed the earlier. . . ."
with--Katharine Lee Bates. Poems of March, 1917, Signed and Inscribed on the front cover: "Ethel Dana Roberts / Thanks and excuses," a pamphlet containing three of her poems. 4 pages, 8vo, folded sheet. Np, nd.