Octave Chanute to Wilbur Wright

Chicago, December 23, 1909

I beg to tender to yourself, to Miss Katharine, to Orville, and to your father my best wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. May all your desires be achieved and your anticipations fulfilled.

I am gratified to learn that all of you are in very good health and that your arduous labors of the past two years have left you all much stronger in every way than when you went away.

I regret that I was unable to go East to see you and Orville fly during the past summer and to talk over old times.1 My own health is good but I am now 78 years of age, and less inclined to travel than heretofore, besides having some business matters which kept me at home. I have for the past weeks been compiling an account of the present status of aerial navigation for a paper which I am to read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which meets in Boston on the 27th. I am hardly through yet.

1 Wilbur Wright had done no flying at Fort Myer in 1909.

Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, January 3, 1910.