only thing left to criticize now is the expression “competent to judge.” So that is where things stand today.The Smithsonian has come down from the claim that the Langley machine did fly in 1914 to the opinion of some that it could have flown if it could have been launched. Eventually, that claim will go too—but I don’t expect I will be around to see it happen.
Katharine
By the spring of 1925, Little Brother was looking more tired and frustrated than ever. His strength and spirit had been pretty severely tried by the Smithsonian’s scheming. I suppose none of us quite realized what a tremendous strain he had been under the last twenty years. Will and he had had to win the patent suits for themselves. No lawyer could handle them all. Sometimes it was maddening to have to let the lawyers talk for them when the lawyers themselves didn’t half understand the fine points in the case. After Will died, I tried to convince Orv that he shouldn’t put so much of himself into the fight. Curtiss didn’t, after all. But Orv would always shoot back, “Yes, and Curtiss loses all the suits too, and I can’t afford to do that.”
Just as I was coming to my wits’ end, Harry reawakened my slumbering genius for worrying. Something he said about the widows in Kansas City, when he came to Dayton that Easter, made me uneasy. A woman’s eye is awfully sharp when she gets the least inkling of schemes afoot. I can jump at conclusions fifty feet away! I was ashamed of my sect that some of those “vidders” should have such dreadful taste as to be out hunting already. Try as I might to put the idea out of my head, when I heard of Mrs. Kirkwood having him over to meet her friends, and of his going out to a lecture with Isabel’s former nurse, and later his letters in which he spokeof his loneliness and his not enjoying going around alone—well, the whole combination was too much for me. I felt like screaming, “Tell all the matchmakers to go to thunder and please, please don’t let anyone make your future life for you!”
With Harry’s fine ideas of honor, you see, I was afraid he might slip into something that didn’t really satisfy him just because it was expected of him—or, worse still, that he had decided to drift along and see what happened. I had wanted to say something ever since Isabel died, but I’d always held back. At last I decided that I must tell him how I felt. I wouldn’t for the world have interfered with any of Harry’s private affairs. I only knew that I would have been glad to have a friend suggest a similar thing to my brother if he were to be left alone. How I used to laugh at the thought of Orv marrying. Harry must have laughed too at my grandmothering care of him!
I won’t deny that my concern for Harry wasn’t entirely disinterested. It came over me that maybe one reason I had thought what I thought and felt what I felt was that I saw a probable end of any—what shall I call it?—active friendship with him. I knew that I would never feel any differently toward him , and I wanted so much that he would never feel differently toward me . For so many years we had helped each other the best we could to weather the storms. But I knew how easily we could lose the chance to express the old friendship. Even so, I told myself that I could get along with that if it meant seeing him have what he deserved—comfort and peace of mind and real companionship.
Mind you, Harry was caught in a situation that wouldn’t be easy for anyone. Many calamities have befallen very fine people under similar circumstances. As one grows old, one’s powers ofadaptation diminish. When we were both young and had nothing and were too inexperienced anyway to look for our own advantage, we could be freer and surer of ourselves when it came to falling in love. But Harry and I were long past that stage in life. I wanted him to have real companionship and thought he might possibly find it someday, but there was no chance of it
Katharine
By the spring of 1925, Little Brother was looking more tired and frustrated than ever. His strength and spirit had been pretty severely tried by the Smithsonian’s scheming. I suppose none of us quite realized what a tremendous strain he had been under the last twenty years. Will and he had had to win the patent suits for themselves. No lawyer could handle them all. Sometimes it was maddening to have to let the lawyers talk for them when the lawyers themselves didn’t half understand the fine points in the case. After Will died, I tried to convince Orv that he shouldn’t put so much of himself into the fight. Curtiss didn’t, after all. But Orv would always shoot back, “Yes, and Curtiss loses all the suits too, and I can’t afford to do that.”
Just as I was coming to my wits’ end, Harry reawakened my slumbering genius for worrying. Something he said about the widows in Kansas City, when he came to Dayton that Easter, made me uneasy. A woman’s eye is awfully sharp when she gets the least inkling of schemes afoot. I can jump at conclusions fifty feet away! I was ashamed of my sect that some of those “vidders” should have such dreadful taste as to be out hunting already. Try as I might to put the idea out of my head, when I heard of Mrs. Kirkwood having him over to meet her friends, and of his going out to a lecture with Isabel’s former nurse, and later his letters in which he spokeof his loneliness and his not enjoying going around alone—well, the whole combination was too much for me. I felt like screaming, “Tell all the matchmakers to go to thunder and please, please don’t let anyone make your future life for you!”
With Harry’s fine ideas of honor, you see, I was afraid he might slip into something that didn’t really satisfy him just because it was expected of him—or, worse still, that he had decided to drift along and see what happened. I had wanted to say something ever since Isabel died, but I’d always held back. At last I decided that I must tell him how I felt. I wouldn’t for the world have interfered with any of Harry’s private affairs. I only knew that I would have been glad to have a friend suggest a similar thing to my brother if he were to be left alone. How I used to laugh at the thought of Orv marrying. Harry must have laughed too at my grandmothering care of him!
I won’t deny that my concern for Harry wasn’t entirely disinterested. It came over me that maybe one reason I had thought what I thought and felt what I felt was that I saw a probable end of any—what shall I call it?—active friendship with him. I knew that I would never feel any differently toward him , and I wanted so much that he would never feel differently toward me . For so many years we had helped each other the best we could to weather the storms. But I knew how easily we could lose the chance to express the old friendship. Even so, I told myself that I could get along with that if it meant seeing him have what he deserved—comfort and peace of mind and real companionship.
Mind you, Harry was caught in a situation that wouldn’t be easy for anyone. Many calamities have befallen very fine people under similar circumstances. As one grows old, one’s powers ofadaptation diminish. When we were both young and had nothing and were too inexperienced anyway to look for our own advantage, we could be freer and surer of ourselves when it came to falling in love. But Harry and I were long past that stage in life. I wanted him to have real companionship and thought he might possibly find it someday, but there was no chance of it
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