I have been working pretty hard this week, studying for a history
examination, and so haven't had much of a chance to write to you.
Everything is about the same as usual here, and there doesn't seem to
be much news to write to you about. The box came all right, and thank
you very much. All the fellows liked it, especially the little apple
pies. Thank you very much for sending it. There hasn't much been
happening here since I wrote you last week. I had to buy a new pair of
running drawers, which cost me fifty cents. Does that come out of my
allowance? Or will you pay for it? There doesn't seem to be any other
news. Well, there goes the bell, so I guess I will be closing.
Your loving son,
BUXTON.
Given the same, even less interesting conditions, and a boy such as
Stevenson must have been (judging from his letters) could probably
have delivered himself of this, and more, too:
_Wyckham-Wyckham,_
_The Tenth._
DEAR PATER:--To-day has been unbelievably exquisite! Great, undulating
clouds, rolling in serried formation across a sky of pure _lapis
lazuli_. I feel like what Updike calls a "myrmidon of unhesitating
amplitude." And a perfect gem of a letter from Toto completed the
felicitous experience. You would hardly believe, and yet you must, in
your _cœur des cœurs_, know, that the brown, esoteric hills of this
Oriental retreat affect me like the red wine of Russilon, and,
indigent as I am in these matters, I cannot but feel that you have, as
Herbert says:
_"Carve or discourse; do not a famine fear._
_Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all."_
Yesterday I saw a little native boy, a veritable boy of the streets,
playing at a game at once so naïve and so resplendent that I was
irresistibly drawn to its contemplation. You will doubtless jeer when
I tell you. He was tossing a small _blatch_, such as grow in great
profusion here, to and fro between himself and the wall of the
_limple_. I was stunned for the moment, and then I realized that I was
looking into the very soul of the peasantry, the open stigma of the
nation. How queer it all seemed! Did it not?
You doubtless think me an ungrateful fellow for not mentioning the
delicious assortment of goodies which came, like melons to Artemis, to
this benighted _gesellschaft_ on Thursday last. They were devoured to
the last crumb, and I was reminded as we ate, like so many _wurras_,
of those lines of that gorgeous Herbert, of whom I am so fond:
_"Must all be veiled, while he that reads divines,_
_Catching the sense at two removes?"_
The breeze is springing up, and it brings to me messages of the open
meadows of Litzel, deep festooned with the riot of gloriannas. How
quiet they seem to me as I think of them now! How emblematic! Do you
know, my dear Parent, that I sometimes wonder if, after all, it were
not better to dream, and dream ... and dream.
Your affectionate son,
BERGQUIST.
So don't worry about your boy if he writes home like that. He may
simply have an eye for fame and future compilation.