From your affectionate Grandson,
William Henry.
P. S. I saw a dollar bill in Gapper Sky Blue’s hand after Tom Cush bade him good by. Dorry says how do I know but ’t was more than a dollar bill, and I don’t.
W. H.
There was a good deal left for the Two Betseys to eat afterwards. I had a letter from Mr. Fry.
William Henry to Aunt Phebe.
Dear Aunt,—
There is going to be a dancing-school, and Dorry’s mother wants him to go, and he says he guesses he shall, so he may know what to do when he goes to parties, and his cousin Arthur, that doesn’t go to this school, says ’t is bully when you’ve learned how. Please ask my grandmother if I may go if I want to. Dorry wants me to if he does, he says, and Bubby Short says he means to too, if we two do, if his mother’ll let him. Dorry’s mother says we shall get very good manners there, and learn how to walk into a room. I know how now to walk into a room, I told him, walk right in. But he says his mother means to enter a room, and there’s more to it than walking right in. He don’t mean an empty room, but company and all that. I guess I should be scared to go, the first of it; I guess I should be bashful, but Dorry’s cousin says you get over that when you’re used to it. Good many fellers are going. Mr. Augustus, and Old Wonder Boy, and Mr. O’Shirk. Now I suppose you can’t think who that is! Don’t you know that one I wrote about, that kicked and didn’t pay, and that wouldn’t help water the course? The great boys picked out that name for him, Mr. O’Shirk. The O stands for owe, and Shirk stands for itself. I send home a map to my grandmother, I’ve just been making, and I tried hard as I could to do it right, and I hope she will excuse mistakes, for I never made one before. ’T is the United States. Old Wonder Boy says he should thought I’d stretched out “Yankee Land” a little bigger. He calls the New England States “Yankee Land.” And he says they make a mighty poor show on the map. But Mr. Augustus told him the brains of the whole country were kept in a little place up top, same as in folks. So W. B. kept still till next time. Dorry said he’d heard of folks going out of the world into Jersey. If I go to dancing-school, I should like to have a bosom shirt, and quite a stylish bow. I think I’m big enough, don’t you, for bosom shirts? I had perfect this forenoon in all. I’ve lost that pair of spotted mittens, and I don’t know where, I’m sure. I know I put them in my pocket. My hands get just as numb now with cold! Seems as if things in my pockets got alive and jumped out. I was clapping ’em and blowing ’em this morning, and that good, tiptop Wedding Cake teacher told me to come in his house, and his wife found some old gloves of his. I never saw a better lady than she is. When she meets us she smiles and says, “How do you do, William Henry?” or Dorry, or whatever boy it is. And when W. B. was sick one day she took care of him. And she asks us to call and see her, and says she likes boys! Dorry says he’s willing to wipe his feet till he wears a hole in the mat, before he goes in her house. For she don’t keep eying your boots. Says he has seen women brush up a feller’s mud right before his face and eyes. My hair grows darker colored now. And my freckles have ’most faded out the color of my face. I’m glad of it.
From your affectionate Nephew,
William Henry.