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"The Howard-Smith Collection"

Transcription copyright: 1998, by Mrs. F. A. Augsbury; all rights reserved.
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To: R. Spurrier Howard-Smith
From: Eben Alexander, American Legation, Athens, Greece
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American Legation
Athens.

                         January 25, 1896.

My dear Sperry,
    I should be writing often to you, if I were to write a tenth of the
times that I think of you and Lida and the children.  Not that I feel very
well acquainted with the children, but I do know (or once did) you and Lida.
I fancy that neither of you has changed much in twenty years, and am glad
to believe it.  It is dismal to go back to New Haven, for instance, and
find what an ass some formerly fine fellow has become.  Of course one is
at liberty to become an ass himself without being conscious of it.  It is
always the other man.

    I suppose you know that Major Payne died in Washington last month.  I
am not sure what income is left for Lucy and the children, though I know
that she is the sort of woman to get along.  I have told her that you are
my treasurer, and that she can send to you if she has need of a small sum
at any time,--ten or twenty dollars or so.  I shall try to keep my balance
with you in decent condition.  There seems now to be a bare chance that our
salaries may be raised.  It would be a mighty good thing, too, though we
are not in a bad way at all.  Doctors and dentists get away with a good deal
of my money.  But Marie is steadily improving, and there is every reason to
believe that another six months will see her in better health than she has
been since her childhood.  Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi is a wonderful woman. She
is helping Marie's regular physician, or rather she is really managing the
case herself.  And she expects no fee, having come in simply as a friend. 
Eleanor's visit to Patras and Zanta was just the change she needed, and she
has come back much stronger.  The vile weather this month has given all of
us colds of the influenza type, that hang on forever.  Like all winters, it
is the worst since eighteen fifty something.  But we do have the most
glorious days thrown in now and then.

    The Athenians are working hard to get ready in time for the games. 
From what I hear, Professor Sloane of Princeton, the American member of
the international committee, is doing very little on our side of the water.
We shall be represented by plenty of visitors, but I fear that few athletes
will come.

    I have just got through (successfully, too) with a most troublesome
case of a Greek who ran away in 1887 when he had been summoned for military
service, became a citizen in Georgia, returned to Greece, and was put into
the army.  I don't know how I got him out, but I am uncommonly glad that I
did, though the man does not desire to be released.  I am afraid there is a
more serious case up in Roumania, where a man who is said to be an American
citizen has been given up to the Turks.  He is probably dead already.  But I
am hoping that he was not a naturalized citizen.

    Our best love goes to the four of you, and to all at Father's.
               Your brother
               E.  Alexander.