Feb. 15th.
_May it please Your Most Excellent Majesty:_
This morning I did eat my breakfast upon a cold turkey pie and a
goose, and I did send for a cup of tee (a china drink) of which I
had never drank before.
Don’t be nervous, Daddy--I haven’t lost my mind; I’m merely
quoting Sam’l Pepys. We’re reading him in connection with English
History, original sources. Sallie and Julia and I converse now in
the language of 1660. Listen to this:
“I went to Charing Cross to see Major Harrison hanged, drawn and
quartered: he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that
condition.” And this: “Dined with my lady who is in handsome
mourning for her brother who died yesterday of spotted fever.”
Seems a little early to commence entertaining, doesn’t it? A friend
of Pepys devised a very cunning manner whereby the king might pay
his debts out of the sale to poor people of old decayed provisions.
What do you, a reformer, think of that? I don’t believe we’re so
bad to-day as the newspapers make out.
Samuel was as excited about his clothes as any girl; he spent five
times as much on dress as his wife--that appears to have been the
Golden Age of husbands. Isn’t this a touching entry? You see he
really was honest. “To-day came home my fine Camlett cloak with gold
buttons, which cost me much money, and I pray God to make me able to
pay for it.”
Excuse me for being so full of Pepys; I’m writing a special topic
on him.
What do you think, Daddy? The Self-Government Association has
abolished the ten-o’clock rule. We can keep our lights all night if
we choose, the only requirement being that we do not disturb
others--we are not supposed to entertain on a large scale. The
result is a beautiful commentary on human nature. Now that we may
stay up as long as we choose, we no longer choose. Our heads begin
to nod at nine o’clock, and by nine-thirty the pen drops from our
nerveless grasp. It’s nine-thirty now. Good night.
Sunday.
Just back from church--preacher from Georgia. We must take care, he
says, not to develop our intellects at the expense of our emotional
natures--but methought it was a poor, dry sermon (Pepys again). It
doesn’t matter what part of the United States or Canada they come
from, or what denomination they are, we always get the same sermon.
Why on earth don’t they go to men’s colleges and urge the students
not to allow their manly natures to be crushed out by too much
mental application?
It’s a beautiful day--frozen and icy and clear. As soon as dinner
is over, Sallie and Julia and Marty Keene and Eleanor Pratt (friends
of mine, but you don’t know them) and I are going to put on short
skirts and walk ’cross country to Crystal Spring Farm and have a
fried chicken and waffle supper, and then have Mr. Crystal Spring
drive us home in his buckboard. We are supposed to be inside the
campus at seven, but we are going to stretch a point to-night and
make it eight.
Farewell, kind Sir.