“And help us to be true to the best that we know with hearts courageously hungry for the truth.”

Minneapolis Star | 2 January 1926

Minneapolis Star | 4 July 1941

Mrs. J Foster Terry SH to JH

January 1926

personal collection

Dear Jess:

I’m so glad you wrote me, and in the way you did, about Bill Foster’s going. In a cowardly way I had not written to his wife because I had not “lifted up mine eyes” and because I had been thinking in an all too human way only of the lonely, lonely way she must walk alone hereafter and the two babies she must lead and teach without his wise and loving help. I had written to his sister Maria because I knew what it meant to lose a well loved Brother and I knew where comfort lay.

Do you write to Mrs. Bill. You always had the gift of understanding sympathy. Their address is 304 Ontario St. SE, Minneapolis. I had a card at Xmas time with snapshots of the 2 little girls—one 3 ½ and one 8 months. Among other things it said “Bill is getting positively fat.” I had written them and told them we missed them last summer but that next summer they’d surely be here and we’d gather with the Jesse Halseys and have an old time reunion.

I understand he was take with pneumonia Xmas Eve and went to the hospital and daily the family here got telegrams of his condition. Pleurisy

--> set in and he died January 2^nd. Jo was teaching in the university too—I’m not sure what—psychology maybe too. One time she had charge of the correspondence courses they gave. She plans I hear to finish the year there. His body was not brought on—it was his wish that he be cremated and that to the family here was an added horror. His mother (so Mrs. Mourse Lafevre told me) is deeply religious and believed it for the best—only the cremation was a sort of sacrilege. (Personally I would not have been surprised had he willed his body to a hospital.) And unfortunately the cremation has given rise to some most unfounded conclusions. Cousin Amie Goodale in telling mother said, “But what could one expect for he did not believe in the resurrection.” I thought if that were neighborhood gossip you might through cousin Ida Fordham be able to slay it. No man who tho’t as deeply and thoroughly as he, could be unreligious. If his views were not all entirely orthodox, they were none the less sincerely religious and every one fought out with a fierce hatred for hypocrisy. Long ago he showed me a prayer he wrote. I learned it at the time and so to my regret did not write it down. Now I can recall but one line: “And help us to be true to the best that we know with hearts courageously hungry for the truth.”

If you have not written his family (in Water Mill) you might stress that religious side—for in your talk with him that evening here you found nothing but reverence I am sure.

I shall be glad to have your calendar—as you know.

Love from the Terrys to the Halseys,

Bess

P. S. I hope Helen is so pep-y and huskey that she is a regular gad-about. Did I tell you on the Xmas card of the twins we are waiting for in the spring? Little Pallas Napoleon and Cassandra Boneparte Fordham Terry, named for my great-great Aunts.

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