o many years--the material to be in it changed
continually, but always the longing to write, and no time, no hopes of
any chance to do it. And the June-Bug coming, and more need for
money--hence more outside lectures than ever. I have no love for the
University of California when I think of that $1700. (I quote from an
article that came out in New York: "It is an astounding fact which his
University must explain, that he, with his great abilities as teacher
and leader, his wide travel and experience and training, received from
the University in his last year of service there a salary of $1700 a
year! The West does not repay commercial genius like that.") For days
after Max's offer we hardly knew we were on earth. It was so very much
the most wonderful thing that could have happened to us. Our friends had
long ago adopted the phrase "just Parker luck," and here was an example
if there ever was one. "Parker luck" indeed it was!

This all meant, to get the fulness out of it, that Carl must make a trip
of at least four months in the East. At first he planned to return in
the middle of it and then go back again; but somehow four months spent
as we planned it out for him seemed so absolutely marvelous,--an
opportunity of a lifetime,--that joy for him was greater in my soul than
the dread of a separation. It was different from any other parting we
had ever had. I was bound that I would not shed a single tear when I saw
him off, even though it meant the longest time apart we had experienced.
Three nights before he left, being a bit blue about things, for all our
fine talk, we prowled down our hillside and found our way to our first
Charlie Chaplin film. We laughed until we cried--we really did. So that
night, seeing Carl off, we went over that Charlie Chaplin film in detail
and let ourselves think and talk of nothing else. We laughed all over
again, and Carl went off laughing, and I waved good-bye laughing. Bless
that Charlie Chaplin film!

It would not take much imagination to realize what that trip meant to
Carl--and through him to me. From the time he first felt the importance
of the application of modern psychology to the study of economics, he
became more and more intellectually isolated from his colleagues. They
had no interest in, no sympathy for, no understanding of, what he was
driving at. From May, when college closed, to October, when he left for
the East, he read prodigiously. He had a mind for assimilation--he knew