I thank you for taking your time to write to me, when you have so much
work to do. My forefinger has about recovered the use of itself. The
middle one did go lame a spell, but now ’t is very well, I thank you.
Mrs. Wedding Cake did them up for me. I think she’s a very kind woman.
Dorry says he’d put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, or lay
down his life, if she wanted him to, or anything else, for the only
woman he knows that will smile on boys’ mud and on boys’ noise.
Ten of us went on an excursion with the teacher, half-price, to Boston,
and had a long ride in the cars, over forty miles. We went everywhere,
and saw lots of things. Went into the Natural History building. You can
go in for nothing. You stand on the floor, at the bottom and look way up
to the top. All round inside are galleries running round, with alcoves
letting out of them, where they keep all sorts of unknown beasts and
birds and bugs and snakes. Some of those great birds are regular
smashers! ’Most dazzles your eyes to look at their feathers, they’re
such bright red! I’d just give a guess how tall they were, but don’t
believe I’d come within a foot or two. Also butterflies of every kind,
besides skeletons of monkeys and children and minerals and all kinds of
grasses and seeds, and nuts there such as you never cracked or thought
of! They are there because they are seeds, not because they are nuts.
And there’s a cast of a great ugly monster, big as several elephants,
that used to walk round the earth before any men lived in it. If he
wasn’t a ripper! Could leave his hind feet on the ground and put his
fore paws up in the trees and eat the tops off! They call him a
Megotharium! I hope he’s spelt right, though he ought not to expect it,
and I don’t know as it makes much difference, seeing he lived thousands
of years before the flood, and lucky he did, Dorry says, for the old ark
couldn’t have floated with many of that sort aboard. He wasn’t named
till long after he was dead and buried. Patient waiter is no loser,
Dorry says, for he’s got more name than the ones that live now, and is
taken more notice of. We saw a cannon-ball on the side of Brattle Street
Church, where ’t was fired in the Revolution, and we went to the top of
the State House. Made our knees ache going up so many steps, but it
pays. For you can look all over the harbor, and all round the country,
and see the white towns, and steeples, for miles and miles. Boston was
built on three hills and the State House is on one of them. I can’t
write any more, now.
W. B. has left school, because his father got a place for him in New
York. His father thought he was old enough to begin. He’s a good deal
older than I am.
From your affectionate Nephew,