I was glad to get your letter and to see you in such high feather. I
hope you will keep so. Watch your health and habits and you may. Still
your letter did not give me unmixed satisfaction. If you knew how I
dislike slang, especially the cheap vulgar kind, you would spare me the
affliction of it. There is slang and slang. Some has wit in it some is
simply a stupid perversion of language. The latter I dislike as I do
the tobacco habit to which it is close akin. You had so far escaped the
tobacco habit and I had hoped you would escape the slang habit. It is
not a bit more manly than the cigaret or cigar. Some slang phrases, like
"you're not in it" or "you're off your trolley" and others, may do in
familiar conversation with friends, but "bunches of cold" or "cuts no
ice" etc., are simply idiotic. When you write return me again the postal
card that I may see what words I misspelled. It still keeps very
mild here, but is snowing this morning. Nip and I have had some fine
skating--like a mirror for over a mile here in front: but the ice is
getting thin. I do not know when I will come to Cambridge. Your mother
has just been passing through the winter solstice of her temper and
declares she is not going anywhere. I shall get away by and by, even if
she stays here. I read Balzac and enjoyed it. The first half is much
the best. The ending is weak and absurd. The old miser is clearly and
strongly drawn, so are most of the characters. But we do not pity or
sympathize with the heroine. How large and fine is that New Paltz girl,
but probably like a big apple, she lacks flavour....
Your affectionate father, J. B.
It was very easy to see why Father disliked slang--it was a perversion
of his art, and as I have said he had the true pride of the craftsman in
his art. No one loved more the apt and witty expression; he was forever
seeking them, and slang was something that overstepped the bounds and
was therefore something truly abhorrent. Often I have heard him tell the
story with delighted relish of some men who were spending a winter night
in a country hotel. Eugene Field I think it was who made the remark that
so delighted Father, and J. T. Trowbridge recounts it in "My own Story."
It was a bitter cold night and covers were scanty; and more than that,
there were several panes out of the window. Field rummaged about in the
closet and found the hoops of an old hoop skirt, just then going out
of fashion, and these he hung over the broken window, saying "That will
keep out the coarsest of the cold!" "Coarsest of the cold," Father
would repeat the expression and laugh again. I remember his envious
acknowledgment of an apt illustration: two famous wood choppers were
chopping in a match to see which could fell his tree first, and so great
was their skill and so swift their blows that the chips literally poured
out of the tree as though it had sprung a leak. "That is good," he said
of the phrase and lowered his eyes. Once we were motor-boating upon the
Champlain Canal and we were delayed all day by the numbers of slow canal
boats. Yet some of the lock tenders said business was very slack. One
of our party commented upon this and said that there were enough canal
boats as it was, that the canal seemed pretty well gummed up with them.
"Pretty well gummed up with them," Father repeated over and over and
laughed like a child each time. Often I complained about the stone house
at Riverby, that Father in planning it did not plan to use the winter
sunshine; not only were the windows not placed right but there were
spruce trees in the way. "You write a book on 'Winter Sunshine' and
you let none in your house," I told him and he said that if he had
the winter sunshine in his house he might not have written the book. A
statement which has a large element of fundamental truth, at least in
his case.
In those days we had much fun skating; Father had a curious pair of old
skates that he fastened on a pair of shoes so that they would not come
off. These shoes he tucked, skates and all, under his arm and we were
off. He would slip off his "Congress" shoes and slip on the shoes with
skates attached and start over the ice, his dog running by his side.
Once he rigged up an attempt at a sail with one of his army blankets and
some pieces of moulding left over from building the study, but it
would not work. People on shore said they thought it was some kind of a
life-saving contraption in case he broke through the ice. One day in the
Shataca we had as fine a skate as we ever could imagine--there had been
a thaw with high water and Black Creek had flooded the swamp, the water
going out over the heavily timbered Shataca back to the upland. This had
then frozen and the water gone out from under it, leaving the glassy ice
hanging from the boles of the trees. The ice sagged a little between the
trees which gave one a most delightful up and down motion as they glided
over it on skates, as near flying as one could imagine at that time.
In spirit and often in fact Father went to college with me, he attended
lectures in the courses I was taking, and often when I had read a book
required I sent the copy on to him to read and he would comment upon
it. In the following letter he comments upon a book I had sent him, and
draws at the same time a picture of days at Slabsides:
Slabsides, Sunday, May 22 {1898}.