You were so long in replying to my letter of the century before last,
and as your letter is not really a reply to anything in mine, that I
fancy you did not get it. I don't recollect, for example, that you
ever acknowledged receipt of little pictures of myself, though maybe
you did--I only hope you got them. The photographs that you send are
very interesting. One of them makes me thirsty--the one of that
fountainhead of good booze, your kitchen sink.
What you say of the mine and how you are to be housed there pleases me
mightily. That's how I should like to live, and mining is what I
should like again to do. Pray God you be not disappointed.
Alas, I cannot even join you during Carlt's vacation, for the mountain
ramble. Please "go slow" in your goating this year. I _think_ you are
better fitted for it than ever before, but you'd better ask your
surgeon about that. By the way, do you know that since women took to
athletics their peculiar disorders have increased about fifty per
cent? You can't make men of women. The truth is, they've taken to
walking on their hind legs a few centuries too soon. Their in'ards
have not learned how to suspend the law of gravity. Add the jolts of
athletics and--there you are.