SEATTLE, Monday—I begin to dislike heartily saying good-bye to people these uncertain days, and yet that seems to be our lot. I left San Diego Sunday morning, did my broadcast in the afternoon from Los Angeles, lunched with some friends and started my journey up the Coast to Seattle before dark.

Southern California is very beautiful with its flowers and waving trees and houses covered with vines. I can quite understand the feeling of the gentleman, who said to me as we came into San Diego, "I never return to southern California without realizing how rich it makes me feel. We seem to have so much given us lavishly by nature."

He had to add that, for the moment, man was reducing some of these riches. He was crowding in a little too quickly on a city that was not quite prepared to receive him in such numbers, or so rapidly. However, this condition is something which can be remedied and the climate is a permanent gift.

Strangely enough, I suppose if you live long enough in certain places, their very familiarity makes you feel an affection for them. In spite of the beauty, which I acknowledge and enjoy when here, I never have any desire permanently to leave the countryside which for me has been "home" during most of the years of my life. Nature is not so kind, winters are hard, summers are sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold, the lot of the farmer and gardener is always a gamble, and yet I like the change of seasons.

I would miss never having a landscape covered by snow. The coming of spring seems to be more wonderful because of the extremes that lie before it and beyond it. No coloring in the world seems to me more brilliant than an autumn hillside, with scarlet and gold maple and russet oak leaves mixed in with the evergreen of pine and hemlock.

I forgot to tell you that Madame Genevieve Tabouis brought me her book the other day. She may be a modern Cassandra, but I have an idea her experiences may be valuable reading for some of the rest of us. I look forward to dipping into this book as soon as possible.

Also, I should have told you long ago about "America's Housekeeping Book," compiled by the New York Herald Tribune's Home Institute and published by Scribners. It is the best aid to the young housekeeper I have seen and full of useful information, no matter how experienced you may be.

It is pleasant to be back with my daughter and son-in-law and I am particularly glad to find her rapidly regaining her strength.