William Henry’s Letter about the “Charade.”
My Dear Grandmother,—
I never did in all my life have such a real tiptop time as we fellers had last night. We acted charades, and I never did any before, and the word was—no, I mustn’t tell you, because it has to be guessed by actions, and when you get the paper that I’m going to send you, soon as I buy a two-cent stamp, then you’ll see it all printed out in that paper. The teacher the fellers call Wedding Cake, because he’s such a good one, asked all the ones that board here to come to his house last night, and we acted charades, and his sister told us what to be, and what things to put on, and everything. You’ll see it printed there, but you must please to send it back, for I promised to return.
There weren’t females enough, and so Dorry he was the Fat Woman, and we all liked to ha’ died a laughing, getting ready, but when we were—there, I ’most told!
O if you could ha’ seen Bubby Short, a fiddling away, with old ragged clothes and old shoes and his cap turned wrong side out, then he passed round that cap—just as sober—much as we could do to keep in! I was a clerk and had a real handsome mustache done under my nose with a piece of burnt cork-stopple burned over the light. And she told me to act big, like a clerk, and I did.
Mr. Augustus was the dandy, and if he didn’t strut, but he struts other times too, but more then, and made all of us laugh.
Old Wonder Boy was the boy that sold candy, and he spoke up smart and quick, just as she told him to, and the teacher was the country feller and acted just as funny, and so did his sister; his sister was the shopping woman. Both of them like to play with boys, and they’re grown up, too. Should you think they would? And they like candy same as we do. And when it came to the end, just as the curtain was dropping down, we all took hold of the rounds of our chairs, and jerked ourselves all of a sudden up in a heap together, and groaned, and so forth.
I wish you all and Aunt Phebe’s folks had been there. We had a treat, and O, if ’t wasn’t a treat, why, I’ll agree to treat myself. Three kinds of ice-creams shaped up into pyramids and rabbits, and scalloped cakes and candy, and such a great floating island in a platter!—Dorry said ’t was a floating continent!—and had red jelly round the platter’s edge, and some of that red jelly was dipped out every dip. O, if he isn’t a tiptop teacher! Dorry says we ought to be ashamed of ourselves if we have missing lessons, or cut up any for much as a week, and more too, I say.
And so I can’t tell any more now, for I mean to study hard if I possibly can,
Your affectionate grandson,
William Henry.