Bad wind to-day. Sometimes the wind don't bother me when I am flying, and sometimes, like to-day, it seems as though the one thing in the whole confounded world is the confounded wind that roars in your ears and makes your eyes water and sneaks down your collar to chill your spine and goes scooting up your sleeves, unless you have gauntlets, and makes your ears sting. Roar, roar, roar, the wind's worse than the noisiest old cast-iron tin-can Vrenskoy motor. You want to duck your head and get down out of it, and Lord it tires you so--aviation isn't all "brilliant risks" and "daring dives" and that kind of blankety-blank circus business, not by a long shot it ain't, lots of it is just sticking there and bucking the wind like a taxi driver speeding for a train in a storm. Tired to-night and mad. _September 5_: New York! I win! Plenty smashes but only got jarred. I beat out Beaufort by eight hours, and Aaron Solomons by nearly a day. Carmeau's machine hopelessly smashed in Columbus, but he was not hurt, but poor Tad Warren _killed_ crossing Illinois. _September 8_: Had no time to write about my reception here in New York till now. I've been worrying about poor Tad Warren's wife, bunch of us got together and made up a purse for her. Nothing more pathetic than these poor little women that poke down the cocktails to keep excited and then go to pieces. I don't believe I was very decent to Tad. Sitting here alone in a hotel room, it seems twice as lonely after the fuss and feathers these last few days, a fellow thinks of all the rotten things he ever did. Poor old Tad. Too late now to cheer him up. Too late. Wonder if they shouldn't have called off race when he was killed. Wish Istra wouldn't keep calling me up. Have I _got_ to be rude to her? I'd like to be decent to her, but I can't stand the cocktail life. Lord, that time she danced, though. Poor Tad was [See Transcriber's note.] Oh hell, to get back to the reception. It was pretty big. Parade of the Aero Club and Squadron A, me in an open-face hack, feeling like a boob while sixty leven billion people cheered. Then reception by mayor, me delivering letter from mayor of Chicago which I had cutely sneaked out in Chicago and mailed to myself here, N. Y. general delivery, so I wouldn't lose it on the way. Then biggest dinner I've ever seen, must have been a thousand there, at the Astor, me very natty in a new dress suit (hey bo, I fooled them, it was ready-made and cost me just $37.50 and fitted like my skin.) Mayor, presidents of boroughs of NY, district attorney, vice president of U.S., lieut. governor of NY, five or six senators, chief of ordnance, U.S.A., arctic explorers and hundreds like that, but most of all Forrest Haviland whom I got them to stick right up near me. Speeches mostly about me, I nearly rubbed the silver off my flossy new cigarette case keeping from looking foolish while they were telling about me and the future of aviation and all them interesting subjects.