Please hurry up and get all the sea air you want, and go up
to Boston and let them show you Milk Street and the _Youth’s
Companion_ building (that’s all there is there). Oh, I forgot the
beautiful men. Look ’em over! I’ve seen ’em. They all carry a
black network bag with a MS. play, and Emerson, and two watercress
sandwiches for lunch in it. All right for youse. Do you know I
have an idea that you’ll meet your fate up there among the _Baked
Beans_. I’m told those Apollo “Belvidears” always take to a girl
that’s both intelligent and good looking. Get that? Well, I won’t
send you a wedding present—so, there!
But, speaking seriously, we’ve had rain here all day. It’s been
cold, too—kind of like late of an evening when you go down barefoot
in the ten-acre medder to drive the cow home, and your mind is
on whippoorwills and stone bruises and Cherokee roses and hot
corn-pone, and the little girl with the white sunbonnet on the
adjoining farm that you saw picking cherries in the lane, and who
you (I don’t mean you, I mean me) fondly imagine is going to come
over to your farm some day and scold you when the cow doesn’t come
home, but who really runs away with a patent churn agent and winds
up by keeping a shooting gallery in South Bend, Indiana.
Oh, well, what’s the _odds_?
Hope you are feeling _quite well_ after your long trip from the
soggy south.
Now while you are up “No’th” just turn yo’self a’ loose and have
a good time. Down in our country the old-time opinion is that
_Liberty Jams_ everything into a bad shape, but it ain’t so. No—the
real and genuine liberty sets you _Free_; it doesn’t cramp you or
lower your ideals _at All_.
A great many wise people have learned that; _you see Them
Everywhere in Greater New York_. And I think you would like to
bring your cow up here and spend the remainder of your time. You
can live nicely on _fifty cents a week_; but a great deal better on
_half a billion_ dollars.
Since I have discovered what a help printed matter is to me,
I simply love to write letters. I know a man who writes 1,900
letters a day to his _Loved One_. But don’t you think he is kind of
“crowdin’” the mourners?
Please ma’am write to me some more right away; I like to hear from
you.
P.S. I’ve had a great time chopping up the papers and building this
letter. You’ll excuse my frivolousness, won’t you?