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Correspondence from Marcelo Motta to Sascha Germer
Marcelo Ramos Motta P.O. Box 6165, L.S.U. Baton Rouge 3, La.
February 12, 1957
Dear Mrs. Germer:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
While I was enjoying your husband's [Karl Germer] and the Sihvonen's [Ero and Jean] hospitality in Barstow, Karl told me that when I first went to visit you and him in New York I forgot to give you my goodbye and thanks as I left.
I could scarcely believe at the time that I could have been capable of such a gross breach not only of manners but also of duty, but I have got to think about it and have been forced to admit that I am just the kind of absent-minded cur who might have done something like this, specially at that time when all of us were passing through such difficult crises.
Therefore I decided to write you to ask your forgiveness. I assure you that if I did it, it was not meant as offense, and though in a normal situation it would have been an unpardonable thoughtlessness, the circumstances were then not normal at all.
Please forgive me. I have developed the greatest admiration and respect for your husband and for you and it shall certainly increase as I grow older and wiser. But, very characteristically of myself, my greatest reason for admiration and respect towards you is, that when we met in Los Angeles, you made no effort to pretend that my presence was unpleasant to you any less because Karl had brought me. You were frank and honest, distantly polite, but all the time polite, and not once were you less than the perfect lady you are.
I will tell you that such qualities as courtesy and lack of dissimulation, combined with a genuine but frank dislike are so foreign in my experience with women that I am forced to put you in a class apart and say from my heart: there goes a noble lady!
Please forgive my grossness and lack of understanding. I am young and still have much to learn, and much suffering to bear in order to come to understanding. All me the solace, as I go through life meeting at every turn inferior, cattish, disloyal and cowardly people, allow me solace, I say, in being able to have the honor to call you my soror.
Love is the law, love under will.
With every expression of admiration and respect,
Marcelo Ramos Motta
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