[Letter of Rev. W. H. Millen to Sally Hope Bonner, March 8, 1929. 
Incomplete.]

[Envelope with prepaid two-cent postage stamp addressed to:]

Mrs. O. Y. Bonner
     Fairfield, Texas
Route

[Return address in upper left corner of envelope:]

After 10 days return to
   Rev. W. H. Millen
   Guntown, Miss.

[Circular postmark stamped in black ink:]

Guntown, Miss. / Mar. 8, 1929

          [p. 1]

             Guntown, Miss.
             Mar. 8th, 1929
My dear Friend
   The Fairfield Recorder containing the 
beautiful tribute to your dear husband and my 
dear friend came to hand a few days ago. That was the 
first intimation I had had of his death. I thank 
you so much for sending me the paper. I shall 
never forget the happy days Mrs. Millen and I spent 
in the home of his father, with the boys Andrew, Jack, 
Young & Theophilus Offie [as] he was familiarly called. 
All are gone but he. First Andrew then Jack. Now 
Young. I remember them all with a great deal of 
pleasure as manly young men with no bad habits. 
Once only after leaving Texas had I the pleasure of 
visiting the state and among the dear friends made in 
the years 1880, 1881, and 1884, and that time I re-
member distinctly the great pleasure of being in 
your home and of seeing around your fireside 
your daughter Bettie and the boys--the names of which 
I had forgotten until I read the Recorder. My dear 
Sallie you have been blessed of Heaven to lose only one 
child out of all that God had loaned to you and 
your husband. But few families have lived together 
so many years with losing only one. And the great 
joy and happiness associated within you and your

[p. 2]

your husband lived to see them all grown and near you. 
Not many parents can lay claim to that happy situation. 
My son is in Philadelphia, Pa. and my “baby girl” is in 
Winter Park, Fla. as the Head of the Grammar School in 
that city; Nina May is with me, a teacher too. Moffatt is 
Managing Editor of McCall’s Publishing Co. For years 
he was connected with the Lady’s Home Journal. He 
has four daughters; the oldest is a Junior in Ran-
dolph Macon’s Woman College, Lynchburgh, Va. 
But I am digressing. This letter is intended for another 
purpose--though it may fall far short of what I could 
wish it. Sympathy is too frequently an absurd word, 
and means little, but when it flows from a heart that 
is sincere and knows the bitterness of separation, and 
has gone to the grave’s mouth and left a loved one be-
neath the sod, and returned home heart-broken, 
crushed and bleeding--when that heart says I “sympa-
thize” with you there is assurance that there is truth 
in it; and when that life and heart is consecrated to 
Jesus--the loving sympathizing Savior, the added 
beauty and power to the Word is somewhat like 
the Master’s “Word.” Without any sort of egotism or 
lack of fidelity & truth my feeling is like unto that of 
my Master. And I beg you to accept it as such for you  
and children who have been called to give back to God a dear 
husband and father. In your loss, great as it [is], you have 
[letter incomplete].