WASHINGTON, Thursday—It is a most lovely warm autumn day and I am having a very difficult time deciding what to take on a two weeks trip which may mean winter weather in spots. One always is tempted to start out feeling that the weather one is experiencing at the moment is going to last until one returns home. I have an aversion to a great deal of baggage and coats of every kind, with the result that I end by having nothing suitable to wear if the weather decides to be fickle.

These lecture trips are planned so long in advance, some of the contracts are entered into nearly a year before hand and yet the details take so long to work out, that a definite itinerary often does not reach me till two or three days before I actually leave. The more I see of this lecture bureau business, the more I marvel that they get their trains correct and all the tickets through without any slip up during the course of the trip. I received yesterday the itinerary, the tickets with accommodations and all my hotels listed for the entire time that we will be gone. Considering the fact that we rarely spend more than a few hours in any one place, and that I speak every night, it seems to me quite an achievement of organization from a business point of view and I am only one of hundreds.

It is unfortunate that having to make these agreements so very far ahead almost invariably one has to give up something which one would like to do. Last year I was away at the time of a family anniversary and when I go again this spring I shall be away for that same anniversary. Some months are bad to plan for because there are too many birthdays, others because the holidays may interfere and once the Washington social season starts, going away for any length of time is out of the question. I chose November after election day thinking it would be fairly free and as usual there are a number of reasons why it is not as free as I thought it would be. In any case I shall be home to go to Warm Springs with my husband for Thanks giving and that is a most important date this year as they plan to dedicate a new civic center in honor of my husband.

I received an invitation to attend the opening of the new training headquarters of the Metropolitan Junior Achievement Corporation and I wish I had been free to accept this invitation, for as I read the literature I feel that here is something which we should all know more about. A real preparation for boys and girls to get experience in their adolescent years which will be of value to them in later life. Nine hundred of these junior corporations exist and do business throughout the country and I never had heard of them before! I am sure that there must be other people who would be as interested as I am in watching the development of one of these corporations!