II.
The letter of Mr. Winthrop Adams to Mr. Robert Fairfax, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.
Boston, July 27, 1892.
Dear Fax:—Sorry enough to hear of your accident. A sprained ankle is no joke. Thought you were the most surefooted of men.
I append the memorandum you ask for of all the Williams of my acquaintance. Are you writing a paper on The Influence of Christian Names on Christian Character? And, if so, why in thunder don’t you begin at the other end of the alphabet?
Van and I sail on the second. He’s dumpier than ever before. What a girl she must be to refuse a million, and Van thrown in!
Yours,
Winthrop Adams.
Memorandum. (Ages only approximate.) William A. Curtis, fifty, lawyer, widower, New York; Wm. B. Slater, twenty-six, physician, bachelor, Iowa; Wm. Thorndike, thirty, merchant, ?, Charleston, S. C.; Wm. Martin, forty, teamster, married, Boston; Wm. Berkeley Vandewater (our Van’s father); Wm. (generally called Billy) Posey, (colored), seventy-five, janitor, Boston; Wm. Winthrop Adams, my three-months’-old nephew, still unmarried, Boston.
I don’t recall any other Williams whom I have met within the last two years.