It is natural to suppose that you will rapidly improve in your new position. I sincerely hope you will, and I have so much confidence in you that I have no favor to ask except that you always remain my worthy friend. My greatest ambition for your future is that your boyhood will not fill your manhood with regrets. I have always told you that it is best to do right in everything, and while you may not succeed in this entirely, come as near it as you can. The next seven years will be the most precious of your life, and if I have a favor to ask it is that you will improve them.

I believe in you, and shall always be proud of your friendship. It has been manly, pure, and honest, and all the more acceptable because I have neither brothers nor sisters, like yourself. In one sense you have been my protégé; I undertook your education, and taught you more at home than at school, and if you succeed well in life (as I am confident you will), it will at least be evidence that I did the best I could. Probably I shall be your last teacher, for your father is a busy man, and will no doubt train you in his way; therefore I hope you will realize how necessary it is that you apply yourself, and learn whenever there is opportunity. There is nothing in the future for me but to teach other deserving boys, but everything for you. Do the best you can, and I shall be proud of you all my life.

Always your friend,
Agnes.

I had it in my mind to sit down and write a long reply at once, but much to my surprise Clinton Bragg came in at this moment and interrupted me. From what he said on entering I judged he was looking for the printer named Adams, who was a dissolute fellow, but seeing I was alone he sat down.

I had disliked Bragg from the first, but he seemed friendly enough, and, taking a bottle of liquor from his pocket, asked me to drink with him. This I refused to do; whereupon he held the bottle in his hand a long while, as if dreading to drink it. At length he went into another room and returned with a dipper of water, after which he took a drink of the liquor, but it gagged him so that he couldn’t get the water to his lips to put out the fire, and he coughed and spit in such a manner as to alarm me. The tears were standing in his eyes when he finished.

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“I like GOOD liquor,” he replied, wiping the tears out of his eyes. “This is horrible. I believe I will throw it away.”

He made a motion as if to toss the bottle out into the street, but he didn’t do it, probably reflecting that it would do very well to carry in his pocket.

I am certain that he came in to let me know that he was addicted to drink, as he was very proud of that reputation, and although liquor was revolting to him he was always trying to create the impression that he could not possibly let it alone. I inferred, also, that he was well acquainted around the establishment, by reason of his association with Adams, for he seemed quite at home.

“Martin don’t drink,” he said, after trying to revive the stub of his cigar, and several ineffectual attempts to light it with a match. “Martin does nothing that is not sensible. He is out there in the hammock asleep now, while I carouse around half the night. Where do you intend to sleep?”