|MY DEAR SOX: We got your last letter some three days ago. It found us
all moderately well though not very frisky. Your letters now days are
getting quite pretty as regards penmanship. You are certainly going
to develop into a fine penman your mother thinks. She says that if you
improve as fast in your writing next year as you have last, you will
soon be writing for the papers.
In my mind's eye I can see you there in your room practicing for a long
time on a spiral spring which you make with your pen. I believe you
call it the whole arm movement. I think you got the idea from me. You
remember I used to have a whole arm movement that I introduced into our
family along in the summer of '69. You was at that time trying to learn
to swim. Once or twice the neighbors brought you home with your lungs
full of river water and your ears full of coarse sand. We pumped you dry
several times, but it did not wean you from the river, so I introduced
the whole arm movement, one day and used it from that on in what you
would call our curric kulum. It worked well.
Your letters are now very attractive from a scientific standpoint. The
letters all have pretty little curly tails on them, and though you do
not always spell according to Gunter, the capital letters are as pretty
as a picture. I never saw such a round O as you make when you hang
your tongue out and begin to swing yourself. Your mother says that
your great-uncle on her side was a good writer too. He could draw off
a turtle dove without taking his pen from the paper, and most everybody
would know as soon as they looked at it that it was a turtle dove or
some such bird as that.
He could also draw a deer with coil spring horns on him, and a barbed
wire fence to it, and a scolloped tail, and it looked as much like a
deer as anything else you could think of.
He was a fine penman and wrote a good deal for the papers. Your mother
has got a lot of his pieces in the house yet, which the papers sent back
because they were busy and crowded full of other stuff. I read some of
these letters, and any one can see that it was a great sacrifice for
the editors to send the pieces back, but they had got used to it and
conquered their own personal feelings, and sent them back because they
were too good for the plain, untutored reader. One editor said that he
did not want to print the enclosed pieces because he thought it would be
a pity to place such pretty writing in the soiled hands of the practical
printer. He said that the manuscript looked so pretty just as it was,
that he hadn't the heart to send it into the composing room. So the
day may not be far away, Henry, when you can write for the press, your
mother thinks. I don't care so much about it myself, but she has her
heart set on it. Your mother thinks that you are a great man, though
I have not detected any symptoms of it yet. She has got that last pen
scroll work here of yours in the bible, where she can look at it every
day. Its the picture of a hen setting in a nest of curly-cues made with
red ink, over a woven wire mattress of dewdads in blue ink, and some
tall grass in violet ink. Your mother says that this fowl is also a
turtle dove, but I think she is wrong.
She says the world has always got a warm place for one who can make such
a beautiful picture without taking his pen off the paper. Perhaps she
is right. I hope that you will not take me for an example, for I am no
writer at all. My parents couldn't give me any advantages when I was
young. When I ought to have been learning how to make a red ink bird of
paradise swooping down on a violet ink butterfly with green horns, I was
frittering away my time trying to keep my misguided parents out of the
poor-house.
I tell you, Henry, there was mighty little fluff and bloom and funny
business in my young life. While you are acquiring the rudiments of
Long Dennis and polo and penmanship, and storing your mind with useful
knowledge with which to parlize your poor parents when you come home,
do not forget, Henry, that your old sway-back father never had those
opportunities for soaking his system full of useful knowledge which you
now enjoy. When I was your age, I was helping to jerk the smutty
logs off of a new farm with a pair of red and restless steers, in the
interest of your grandfather.
But, I do not repine. I just simply call your attention to your
priviledges. Could you have a Summer in the heart of the primeval
forest, thrown in contact with a pair of high-strung steers and a large
number of black flies of the most malignant type, "snaking" half-burnt
logs across yourself and fighting flies from early dawn till set of sun,
you would be willing, nay tickled, to go back to your monotonous round
of base ball and Suffolk jackets and pest-house cigarettes. .
We rather expected you home some time ago, but you said you needed sea
air and change of scene, so you will not be home very likely till the
latter part of the month. We will be glad to see you any time, Henry,
and we will try to make it as pleasant as we can for you. Your mother
got me to fill the big straw-tick for your bed again, so that you would
have a nice tall place to sleep, and so that you could live high, as the
feller said.
I tried on the old velocipede pants you sent home last week. They are
too short for me with the style of legs I am using this Summer. Your
bathing pants are also too short for me, so I gave them to a poor woman
here who is trying to ameliorate the condition of her sex.
I send you our love and $9 in money. We will sell the other calf as soon
as it is ripe. Chintz bugs are rather more robust than last year, and
the mortgage on our place looks as if it might mature prematurely. We
had a lecture on phrenology at the school-house Tuesday night, during
which four of our this spring's roan turkies wandered so far away from
home that they lost their bearings and never came back again. So good-by
for this time. Your father,