My dear Little Sister,—
I’m sorry your little birdie’s dead! He was a nice singing birdie! But I wouldn’t cry. Maybe you’ll have another one some time, if you’re a good little girl. Maybe father’ll go to Boston and buy you one, or maybe Cousin Joe will send one home to you, in a vessel, or maybe I’ll catch one, or maybe a man will come along with birds to sell, or maybe Aunt Phebe’s bird will lay an egg and hatch one out. I wouldn’t feel bad about it. It isn’t any use to feel bad about it. Maybe, if he hadn’t been killed, he’d ’a’ died. Dorry says, “Tell her, ‘Don’t you cry,’ and I’ll give her something, catch her a rabbit or a squirrel!” Says he’ll tease his sister for her white mice. Says he’ll tease her with the tears in his eyes,—or else her banties.
How do you like your teacher? Do you learn any lessons at school? You must try to get up above all the other ones. We’ve got two new teachers this year. One is clever, and we like that one, but the other one isn’t very. We call the good one Wedding Cake, and we call the other one Brown Bread. Did grandmother tell you about the Fortune Tellers? We went to-day and she told mine true. She said my father was a very kind man, and said I was quick to get mad, and said I had just got something I’d wanted a long time (watch, you know), and said I should have something else that I wanted, but didn’t say when. I wonder how she knew I wanted a gun. I thought perhaps somebody told her, and laid it to Old Wonder Boy, for we two had been talking about guns. But he flared up just like a flash of powder. “There. Now you needn’t blame that on to me!” says he. “You fellers always do blame everything on to me!” Sometimes when somebody touches him he hollers out, “Leave me loose! Leave me loose!” Dorry says that’s the way fellers talk down in Jersey. The Fortune Teller told W. B. that he came from a long way off, and that he wanted to be a soldier, but he’d better give up that, for he wouldn’t dare to go to war, without he went behind to sell pies. All of us laughed to hear that, for Old Wonder Boy is quick to get scared. But he is always straightening himself up, and looking big, and talking about his native land, and what he would do for his native land, and how he would fight for his native land, and how he would die for his native land. He says that why she told him that kind of a fortune was because he gave her pennies and not silver money. His uncle that goes cap’n of a vessel has sent him a letter, and in the letter it said that he had a sailor aboard his ship that used to come to this school.
I was going to tell you a funny story about W. B.’s getting scared, but Dorry he keeps teasing me to go somewhere. I made these joggly letters when he tickled my ears with his paint-brush. Has your pullet begun to lay yet? I hope my rooster won’t be killed. Tell them not to. Benjie says he had a grand great rooster. It was white and had green and purple tail feathers, O, very long tail feathers, and stood ’most as high as a barrel of flour, with great yellow legs, and had a beautiful crow, and could drive away every other one that showed his head, and he set his eyes by that rooster, but when he got home they had killed him for broth, and when he asked ’em where his rooster was they brought out the wish-bone and two tail feathers, and that was all there was left of him. I wouldn’t have poor little kitty drowned way down in the deep water ’cause to drown a kitty couldn’t make a birdie alive again. Have your flowers bloomed out yet? You must be a good little girl, and try to please your grandmother all you can.
From your affectionate brother,
William Henry.
P. S. Now Dorry’s run to head off a loose horse, and I’ll tell you about Old Wonder Boy’s getting scared. It was one night when—Now there comes Dorry back again! But next time I will.
W. H.