Say, that’s a great book! And I just know I’m getting more out of it than if I’d been familiar with it ever since I was a boy, with stone-bruises on my hoofs. I’ve read it over two or three times now, and find things every time that I didn’t quite get before.
It ought to be called Yond Caius Cassius, though. Shakspere makes Julius out to be a superstitious old wretch. But Julius had some pretty good hunches at that.
Of course Mark Antony’s wonderful speech at the funeral was fine business. Gee! how he skinned the “Honorable men!” Some of the things he said after that will stand reading, too.
But Yond Cassius, he was the man for my money. He was a regular go-getter. If Brutus had only hearkened to Cassius once in a while they’d have made a different play of it. I didn’t like Brutus near so well. He was a four-flusher. Said he wouldn’t kill himself and sure enough he did. He was set up and heady and touchy. I shouldn’t wonder if he was better than Cassius, just morally. I guess maybe that’s why Cassius knuckled down to him and humored him so. But intellectually, and as a man of action, he wasn’t ace-high to Cassius.
Still there’s no denying that Brutus had a fine line of talk. There was his farewell to Cassius—you remember that—and his parting with his other friends.
I’ve been reading Carlyle’s “French Revolution” too. It’s a little too deep for me, so I take it in small doses. It looks to me like a great writer could take a page of it and build a book on it.
Well, that’s all I know. Oh, yes! I tried to learn typewriting when I was in El Paso—I musn’t forget that. I made up a sentence with all the letters in it—he kept vexing me by frantic journeys hidden with quiet zeal—I got so I could rattle that off pretty well, but when I tried new stuff I got balled up.
Will write you when I can. George will know what to do with the work. Have the boys help him.
Your loving husband,
Jeff.
Dear Kids: