But Jonah is equally as hard on Trotwood, as the following unique note
came to me in a batch of proof:
dear mister trotwood:—
I think your writing is plain, but the printer, says it is a
cross between a chinese laundry ticket and the Lord’s prayer
ritten in arabic. They sent one sheet back to-day and i red it
and it reeds like this—“The Hal family is a very slow bunch,
and unless they cross the blood with a Texas Mustang pretty
soon, they will only be fit for water wagons and apple carts,
and anny boddy would go to sleep waiting for them to go around
a half mile track.”
I draped it on the floor, and when I picked it up it was
different, and red like this—(I had it up-side-down):
Life’s ills, could man by knowing,
Be spared from undergoing,
There would be sense in knowing;
But since with all our knowing,
This coal dust keeps on blowing,
Well—what’s the use in knowing?
Mr. Sweetland the business manager said I was a fool, but when
he tried to reed it, he could not tell whuther it was a horse
story or poem or something about Uncle Wash. He said it was one
of the three, and said you wrote like a lobster. it is plain
enough to me, but i wish you would write and tell me just what
it is, and I will tell the printer for he is too fresh anyhow.
Hear is whut I mad of it last:
When you give a sweet maid kisses
She hands you back a sigh—
When you give a printer copy
He hands you back a pi—
And he made it in the gloaming
With his stomach full of rye!
noto bene:—Pleas com up and let us no which one goes. And pleas
pardon a suggestion but I saw to-day a thing that wurred me
verry grately. it was that the buggs insex and varments eats
up Three Billion Dollars worth of the farmers truck and stuff
every year. Don’t you think we ought to let them no about it.