P. S. When the boys laugh at me, I laugh too. That’s a good way.
P. S. There’s a man here that’s got nine puppies. If I had some money I could buy one. The boys don’t plague me quite so much. I’m sorry you dropped off your spectacles down the well. I suppose they sunk. I’ve got a sneezing cold.
W. H.
About the spectacles, I may as well confess that I was the means of their being lost.
One day Uncle Jacob came into the office hastily, and, with a look of distress, said to me very solemnly,—
“Mr. Fry, if you can, I want you to leave everything, and ride out with me!”
“Oh! what is the matter?” I exclaimed.
“Why,” said he, “ever since we sent out word about old clothes, they’ve been coming in so fast the rooms are all filled up, and we don’t know where to go!”
He then went on to tell that the notice had spread into all the neighborhoods round about, and that bundles of every description were constantly pouring in. They were left at the back door, front door, side door, dropped on the piazza, and in at the windows. Men riding by tossed them into the yard, and little boys came tugging bundles, bigger than they could lift, or dragged them in roller-carts, or wheeled them in wheelbarrows. He said he found bundles waiting for him at the store, at the post-office, and he could hardly ride along the street without some woman knocking at the window, and holding up one, and beckoning with her forefinger for him to come in after it! Even in the meeting-house somebody took a roll of something from under a shawl and handed him! He would have brought, the parcels, or a part of them, but there was every kind of a thing sent in,—white vests and flounced lace or muslin gowns, and open-work stockings; and some things were too poor, and some were too nice, and his folks thought Mr. Fry should come out.