Nassau, Bahamas, Feb. 3.

Dearest Esther:

Bob is asleep and I will snatch these few minutes to write you a letter, but it may not be very long because he is liable to wake up any moment and insist that I stop writing and “pay some attention” to him. He is honestly jealous of you and I being friends or of me caring for anybody besides him enough to write to them. Isn’t that too silly for words and yet it thrills me to have him be that way and shows that I am really everything in his life. He is a regular child where I am concerned and can’t bear to have me even mention my old friends or things that happened before I met him.

Esther, I am tickled to death now that we didn’t go on our honeymoon right after we were married, but waited these seven months when Bob can have a real vacation and don’t have to be worrying about business all of the time. Just think we might never have seen this place if we hadn’t made up our minds to wait and Esther it is just heaven, so beautiful and quaint that it is like a place in some other world.

Well I will begin at the beginning and tell you everything about our trip like I promised though I am afraid it won’t be very interesting as in the first place I was deathly seasick all the way down on the boat, but it may sound funny but I am honestly glad I was because Bob was so perfectly dear and would not leave me for a minute though he is a wonderful sailor himself and I being sick must have simply ruined the trip for him. Well I was just in misery for three nights and two days, but as soon as the boat stopped Monday morning I was all right again and able to take in all the sights.

The boat has to anchor out in the harbor on account of the water being too shallow near land so we were all loaded on to a tender and brought to the dock here and then we had to wait around while they inspected our baggage because this is a British port though they didn’t open anything at all but just put chalk marks on it and Bob says about the only thing the customs inspectors look for these days is liquor and they realize nobody would try and smuggle liquor to this place as it would be like bringing coal to New Castle, PA.

Next we got into a two seated carriage and drove to the hotel and Bob talked to the Negro driver and of course all the drivers and people like that here are Negros but not like our Negros at home, they talk with a kind of English accent and you can’t hardly understand them half the time. Our room is wonderful and faces on the water which is wonderful, all different shades of green and blue and purple, it makes a person wish they were a painter it is so wonderful in coloring.

At lunch time Bob told the head waiter to put us as far as he could from other people. Bob says he used to be one of the most sociable men in the world but since he married me he don’t want anything to do with other people and the more we can keep to ourselves just we two the better he likes it. The head waiter gave us a table in a corner near a window and when another couple came in and sat at the next table Bob actually got mad at them like nobody had a right to be in the same dining room with us almost.

After lunch I unpacked or rather I directed the unpacking and Bob did the real work as he won’t let me lift my hand to really do anything as he says he would never forgive himself if I overdid. At five o’clock the hotel orchestra began playing out on the lawn where they have a dance floor and serve tea and drinks and Bob and I had some tea and cakes and danced four dances.

Most of the other people around us were drinking highballs and things and Bob said he didn’t blame them, if he had to dance with some of the women here he would want to drink enough first to blind him. But he said he wanted his eyes clear when he looked at me and as for drinking anything why just being with me and touching me made him intoxicated. He does say the nicest things and puts them so differently.

He is beginning to wake up so this will have to be “continued in our next.”

Nassau, Bahamas, Feb. 6.

Dearest Esther:

We are having such a heavenly time that it seems criminal to not share it with somebody but of course it is just us being here together alone that makes it so heavenly. It is simply heavenly here and I don’t see why people go other places when they can come here and I guess maybe they don’t know about this place or perhaps it seems more wonderful to me than it really is on account of being here with Bob and that is what makes it so wonderful. Anyway I was never so happy in my life and am already dreading the time when it will be time to start home.

The first day we got here there was a young couple introduced themselves to Bob after dinner that evening and wanted to know did we want to play bridge with them. As you know I don’t play bridge and Bob says he can’t take any interest in games unless I am in them so he told these people we were going out for a sail and after we were alone he said he hated to tell a lie so we would have to go out for a sail so he would not have told those people a lie, so he hired a sail boat and it was simply heavenly sailing in the moonlight just Bob and I and the man sailing the boat who never looked at us.

The moonlight here is heavenly and I don’t believe there is any other place where it is so wonderful and it was so wonderful that Bob and I had to laugh at the idea of staying in a stuffy hotel and playing cards when you could be out sailing in the moonlight though I suppose it would bore some people.

The next morning we got on the hotel boat and went over to the bathing beach and went in swimming and the water was wonderful but Bob didn’t like it at first as he said there was too many people around and he hated to have other men see me in my bathing suit so he and I walked away along the beach where there was nobody else and we went in the water there. It was kind of weedy and not as nice as the regular beach as there was also some rocks in the place we went in and I stubbed my toe on one of them, but Bob said he would rather I stubbed my toe than have a lot of men staring at me, but he was awfully nice about my toe and kept asking me how it felt.

Bob is a wonderful swimmer and I tried to make him go out and enjoy himself in the deep water, but he wouldn’t leave me for a second and he said he would never forgive himself if he left me and something happened to me. I told him I would stay in shallow water and there would be no danger, but he said he had heard that sharks and baracudas sometimes came right up to the beach and bit women if they were alone.

We came back to the hotel for lunch and in the afternoon we took a ride on the glass bottom boat to the sea garden. It is a boat with a glass bottom and you can see right through it and they took us to a place where the bottom of the sea is just like a garden with things growing in it and fish. It was simply heavenly, but Bob got kind of mad because there was a man that spoke to me, the man didn’t mean anything, but Bob gave him a terrible look and the incident kind of spoiled the trip.

We had dinner in our room as Bob said there was too many people in the dining room. We went to bed early and the orchestra was playing out on the lawn and it was heavenly just lying there listening and finally they sang some native Bahamian songs and Bob just loved them and is going to try and get them to take home with us.

He is through shaving and all dressed and this will have to be “continued in our next” as he gets impatient if I am not ready to do things with him when he is ready to do them.

Nassau, Bahamas, Feb. 10.

Dearest Esther:

What do you think I did today? Well you will never guess so I may as well tell you. I played golf. I suppose I ought not to say I really played it but I played at it though Bob said I had a beautiful swing and he was amazed at how quickly I picked it up.

Bob of course is a splendid golf player and brought his clubs along, but up to today I couldn’t make him play as he said it was no fun for him to do anything if I was not doing it with him, but yesterday we took a carriage ride and went past the golf course and Bob said he would like to try it and I said why didn’t he and then he said he would if I would go along and play with him. Well at first I thought he was joking, but he was in dead earnest and he said he did not see any reason why I did not learn the game and then in the summer time we could play together and he would not have to play around with a lot of stupid men who always wanted to bet and then get sore when he beats them.

Well I finally agreed to try it and he borrowed some clubs from Jock Hutchinson who is the teacher down here and we went out on the linx and the first time I swang at the ball I missed it entirely, but I hit it the next time and did better after that and we played nine holes and Bob said my score was 92 which was good for a beginner. We are going to play again tomorrow and every day we are down here. It is really wonderful exercise and as long as Bob won’t play without me I feel like I really ought to play with him because he really enjoys the game so much.

It took us an hour to get out there and an hour to get back, but we could have made it in ten minutes each way if we had gone in an automobile, but Bob won’t use the automobiles here as he says the carriages look more in keeping with the place they are so quaint and it would be sacrilegious to use the automobiles. Well Esther won’t you be proud of me when I am a real golfer and maybe I will have a chance to teach you the game sometime when Bob is away on business.

We had a narrow escape when we got back to the hotel. Just as we were coming in the door a man got out of a car right behind us that Bob knows and it was just luck that he didn’t see Bob. He is from Chicago and Bob says he is an awfully nice man and he does business with him sometimes, but he says our whole trip would be ruined if we couldn’t be alone just by ourselves all the time we are here and not see anybody else, that is to talk to them. So we are having dinner in our room again so as not to take any chance of seeing this man and maybe his wife is here with him and we would have to spend an evening with them or something. I hope they will go away soon and not bother us.

I had some pictures taken the second day we were here by a man who takes pictures of all the hotel guests and then if you like them you can buy some of them. They were finished today and the man showed them to us and I wanted to buy two or three of each as they were awfully good, but Bob said I could only buy one of each and that would be for him and he didn’t want me sending my pictures around to other people, so I guess you will just have to remember what I look like and get along without my picture.

Last night the orchestra played out on the lawn and Bob and I danced a couple of dances and were sitting there watching the others and the assistant manager of the hotel was there and he came to our table and asked me to dance and I almost started to get up when Bob answered for me and said he was sorry but I had turned my ankle in swimming.

I know the man had seen me dancing just a few minutes before and I don’t know what he thought, but he was awfully nice about it and said maybe we could have a dance some other time.

After he had gone away Bob said I wasn’t to speak to him next time I saw him or he would take it as an encouragement and ask me to dance with him again.

Must close now as Bob has finished the letters he was writing and wants to be read aloud to. I don’t read aloud very well, but he says he loves to have me as he can sit and look at me while I read and it don’t make any difference if I read well or not because he is too busy looking at me to pay any attention to what I am reading.

Nassau, Bahamas, Feb. 13.

Dearest Esther:

I know I promised to write you every other day while we were down here, but I am afraid I will have to ask you to release me from my promise. I suppose I could tell you a fib and say I don’t have time to write, but that would be a fib and the real reason I can’t write to you anymore is because it makes Bob mad and I won’t do anything behind his back so I know you will understand if you don’t hear from me again and as soon as I get home and Bob’s vacation is over, I will come and see you and tell you about the rest of our trip, that is anything that might be interesting.

Bob don’t like to have me write for two reasons, in the first place he is jealous of all my old friends and he says I am his wife now and all my time belongs to him and he don’t want me wasting it writing to other people even if they are old friends and secondly he don’t like the idea of me telling anybody the things we do down here as he says this belated honeymoon as he calls it is sacred between him and me and it is nobody’s else business what we do down here.

Please try and understand Esther and forgive me and you know I love you and wouldn’t do anything in the world to hurt your feelings, but I am married to Bob now and his feelings are to be considered above everything else. We are having such a heavenly time that I simply can’t do anything that would spoil it in any way.

Nassau, Bahamas, Feb. 5.

Dearest Esther:

Well Esther here we are Bob and I “honeymooning” again and it hardly seems possible that three years have gone by since we were in Nassau before, but don’t you think it was a wonderful idea coming back to the place where we had such a heavenly time the winter after we were married and this is the first time Bob has had a real vacation since then and he has certainly earned it and I know he will enjoy every minute down here even if we keep to ourselves and just rest and “loaf.”

I am feeling all right again after being terribly seasick all the way down from New York. I thought it was quite rough, but Bob said it was just like a billiard table and he was quite provoked at me being sick and threatened to leave me home the next time he was going anywhere on a boat. He said he did not see how I ever sat through a dinner party as he would think the waves in the finger bowl would upset me. Bob just loves to tease me.

When we went in the dining room for lunch today the same head waiter was there as the last time and he remembered us after three years and gave us the same corner table we had the last time. Imagine him remembering us after three years, but after lunch Bob stopped and talked to him about giving us another table in the middle of the room and not so far off from everybody as he said it would not seem like we were in a big hotel way off from everybody like that. So tonight he is going to change us.

I have had quite a busy afternoon unpacking and getting settled. Bob went out with some men he met on the boat to play golf as he said he couldn’t very well get out of it and he thought I would be too worn out to play with him after my seasickness. I am afraid he will be bothered to death by all the different people he met on the boat which he couldn’t help because of course I was unable to leave my stateroom for meals and they put him at a big table with a lot of other people but he can always manage to discourage new acquaintances if they begin to make a nuisance of themselves.

Will have to close as Bob promised he would be back in time for a few dances before it is time to dress for dinner, but it is after six now and the orchestra will soon stop playing, but I suppose they were slow getting their golf game started the first day or maybe he has had trouble getting away from those other men.

Nassau, Bahamas, Feb. 7.

Dearest Esther:

Well it is nearly bed time but I don’t feel like going to bed till Bob comes in and he is downstairs playing bridge with a woman and her husband and the woman’s sister that he met on the boat. I have hardly seen him at all today as he was not feeling well this morning and would not go to the beach swimming as he said he thought it had upset his stomach swallowing the salt water, but he insisted on me going without him and he introduced me to a friend of his from Chicago a Mr. Granville who was here three years ago with his wife but his wife has since died. Bob said Mr. Granville was a great swimmer and would see that I did not drown and would teach me to swim.

Well I wouldn’t let him teach me to swim because I hate to have a strange man come near me in swimming, but he was awfully nice to me, but I didn’t stay in long as I hate to enjoy myself when Bob is not feeling well.

Bob and I had lunch together and he felt better and arranged a golf game with some people he met on the boat. I asked him if he was sure he ought to play when he didn’t feel well, but he said it was swimming that upset him and not golf. I asked him if he wasn’t ever going to play golf again with me and he said yes sometime, but he said it wasn’t much fun playing with me as I am so terrible that we can’t play any kind of a match and he likes to play with people he can bet with and he also said I look so awkward when I try to play that he is afraid people will laugh at me.

Yesterday I asked him if he didn’t want to go out in the glass bottom boat and look at the sea garden as we did when we were here before and he said yes we would go tomorrow, meaning today, but when I reminded him of it he told me to go alone or find somebody else to go with as he couldn’t get any thrill out of looking at a bunch of dirty sea weed. He did keep his promise to take me to tea out on the lawn where they dance.

The golf match had tired him out though and he wouldn’t dance but he would not admit he was tired but said he didn’t like the music and wished the orchestra would get up to date and play something besides old native tunes that the Negros down here made up. They really only played the native songs for one dance, but Bob has no ear and don’t know one tune from another. He insisted on me dancing with Mr. Granville whom he invited to our table.

We had tea and Bob said he felt like he needed something stronger than tea and he drank four highballs so I knew he wasn’t telling the truth when he said the golf hadn’t made him tired.

I was really very tired myself and I suggested that it would be a good thing for both of us if we had dinner in our room and we would go to bed right after and I would read to him. He said he wouldn’t like anything better though he could hardly understand me when I read because I mumble my words so, but he had asked some people he met on the boat to have a cocktail with him and they were people who might help him in a business way so he couldn’t get out of it, but if I met them too why it would mean we would probably have them on our hands the rest of the time we are here so he thought it would be a good idea for me to have dinner by myself and go to bed when I felt like it.

After dinner he phoned up to say that he got tangled up in a bridge game with these people and I had better go to bed and not wait for him. But I know he will have some things to tell me about these people when he comes in and he tells things in such an amusing way that I hate to miss it and maybe by tomorrow morning he won’t remember half the things that happened.

The weather has been heavenly and we are having a simply wonderful time and I wish sometime you could come down here and spend a week or two as it is simply heavenly and I don’t believe there is another place like it in the world.

Am out of stationery so this will have to be “continued in our next.”

Nassau, Bahamas, Feb. 8.

Dearest Esther:

I have been having dinner in the room again as I did not feel like dressing up and going downstairs. Bob was tired out too and wanted to stay here with me, but those people he met on the boat insisted on him having a cocktail with them and as long as he had to get dressed for that he thought he might as well eat in the dining room and now he is playing bridge with them again as they couldn’t find a fourth without him. They are a Mr. and Mrs. Griffin and Mrs. Griffin’s sister, Miss Cutts, and he met them on the boat coming down. Mr. Griffin is in a position to do Bob some good in a business way and that is why Bob don’t like to refuse their invitations.

This morning I went over to the beach with Mr. Granville and Bob played golf with some people he met on the boat. As we were coming back from the beach a man stopped us who takes pictures and he wanted to take a picture of Mr. Granville and me together but I thought that wouldn’t look right so I let him take my picture alone and while he was taking it Bob came along and he had just come back from his golf game and when he saw me getting my picture taken he teased me about it and said I must think I was a movie star, or somebody, getting my picture taken all the time.

I said I was just having it taken for him and he said I needn’t waste money on pictures of myself for him as he already had enough of them and I better send these to my friends who were always asking me for my picture. So if they are good I will send you one and send some to the other girls too.

This afternoon Bob went out to play golf and I was sitting on the porch reading and Mr. Granville came along and invited me to take a drive with him and I was tired reading so I accepted and we took a carriage though Bob says it is silly to ride in the old broken down carriages they have got here when you can get a car and get to places ten times as fast but we were in no hurry so we took a carriage and drove past the golf club and they have got a bathing beach out there too and we stopped for a minute to watch the people in swimming and there was Bob swimming with Miss Cutts whom he met on the boat coming down.

Well he didn’t see us and I didn’t say anything to him about it when he came home but he is just a child Esther and he knew I would think it was bad for him to go in swimming when the salt water affects him so and that is why he went in swimming where he thought I wouldn’t see him and I only hope he don’t get sick again.

He had promised to take me for a moonlight sail tonight, but I could see that his golf and his swim had worn him out and besides that the Griffins made him stay down on the lawn when they got back from the golf club and he didn’t want to offend them but felt so tired that he had to take some highballs and then Miss Cutts practically made him dance with her twice and he was tired enough without that, but he never would have told me all the things he had had to do and probably would have gone sailing with me if I had reminded him of it, but I had watched him dancing from my window which fronts on the lawn and I knew how he must feel so I pretended I had forgotten all about our sail.

Poor Bob he wasn’t a bit like his usual cheerful self when he got up in the room and he would have given anything to get out of his engagement tonight and he was so cross that when I tried to persuade him to stay here by hinting that I was getting lonesome staying all by myself with nothing to do, he said, “What would you do if I was here? All you ever do is read or write letters. Why don’t you write to your friend Esther and tell her your troubles?”

So I just laughed it off but I do get a little lonesome sometimes and wish he could get rid of these people he met on the boat. It is so heavenly here and such a wonderful place and we could be having such a heavenly time if it wasn’t for the Griffins. Isn’t it a darn shame that a man can’t get away from business even on his vacation when he hasn’t had one in three years?

Miami, Fla., Feb. 11.

Dearest Esther:

You will probably be surprised at me writing to you from this place. I arrived here by boat from Nassau this morning and was sick all the way and now I am waiting for train time. I leave here tonight for home and will arrive there Thursday forenoon. I am crazy to see you Esther and I am writing to know if you can’t come and visit me for a few days next week. We will go to a show every night or do anything you want to do. I just want to see you and have a nice visit.

Bob is staying on at Nassau for two more weeks as he loves it there and it agrees with him so well. I love it too and think it is the most heavenly place I ever went to, but there is so much to do there that a person simply gets worn out and both Bob and I agreed that I wasn’t strong enough to stand the pace and would be better off at home.

I will be expecting a wire from you as soon as you get this. Wire me at home and I will try and get tickets for things I know you will want to see. Please come Esther. Any day will do and the sooner the better, but don’t disappoint me.