Georgia Louise Allen to Jane Addams, September 13, 1911

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Big Sandy, Mont.,
Sept. 13, 1911.

Dear Miss Addams:

I want to thank you for having given one girl the great help you have by making it possible for her to read "Twenty Years at Hull House." It has helped me so much in solving little difficulties and answering perplexing questions.

This is a small rough cow town with only one other girl in it and your book has been one of the most pleasant companions I have [page 2] had. It is because you are just yourself as I have always imagined you all through the book that you seem yourself to be sitting with me and telling me these things. You have told me why I have been so discontented and why I have suffered so on account of the degradations here.

What you have really done, Miss Addams, is that you have helped me over some very rough places on to a higher plane, which all reading of poetry and science and [page 3] psychology as a means of improvement this past year, has failed to do. My motives are wobbly yet, but I had none before and my understanding is much strengthened.

I met you once at Hull House, of course you do not remember the circumstance, and counted it among my red letter days because I had always admired you, but when I found out from your book what a great love you have for Abraham Lincoln, I loved you much more, for I have loved him jealously and [page 4] jealously since I first became familiar with his name.

You have done so much for me -- perhaps in this environment it was especially effective -- that I want you to know about it and the secondary or indirect settlement work you are doing.

Very sincerely,
Georgia L. Allen

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