Dearest Auntie
I noticed after I mailed my letter to you that I had dated it incorrectly. I wrote you on the It was on the 8th the eighth 8th that we reached Paducah. The next day over the detours -- it seems as if half the roads in Tennessee are "under construction!" -- was harder than all the rest of the trip put together. By the time we reached Chattanooga at half past twelve ↑one↓ that night we ↑were↓ both really dead though ↑each↓ still protesting [illegible] to the other that we were all right. We listened to a policeman & taxi-cab mans advice as to directions as to how to get to Dayton and went into a Thompson restaurant -- the only [page 2] one we could see -- of any kind -- open. I have eaten ↑in↓ about every kind of place but this was the first time I have ever feasted in a chain café. Manuel brought me coffee & doughnuts -- and as we munched and drank in solemn heavy silence, he turned to me:
"You heard what the policeman said?"
"Yes."
"Well, have you the slightest idea of how we are to get out of town?"
I confessed that my mind was a hopeless jumble of "turn to the rights -- go to the lefts, follow the tracks, & turn offs." In the end we ↑E. H. J.↓ had the taxi-man lead us out of town. But by the time we were on the Dayton asphalt highway the coffee had done its work & we felt as gay & rejuvenated as if it were morning -- which indeed it was. [page 3]
[page(s) missing] want to go to any of these [many?] doctors around here, nor tell Manuel (because I was afraid he'd get dictatorial & make me stay in my room) -- and I hadn't come over one thousand miles for any such purpose: -- ↑Scarcely!↓ so I drew it together again & have it held firmly with adhesive plaster and if I do say so myself I've made a ↑it's a very↓ neat job of -- although it made me feel quite sick & faint before I got through [with it].
I am going to leave it like this, undisturbed, for two or three days & keep as quite as I can conveniently can. I really don't think it will amount to anything at all just heal together. By the time I'm ready to go home I'll be in great shape.
Directly we were dressed & had had breakfast we drove over to the so-called Mansion House. It is where the [illegible] is domiciled. It is [page(s) missing]
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