P. S. I did not get a sled; but I did saw three cords of wood, stove length.
Lynn, Mass.
October 30, 19—
Dear Ted:
Somehow the price of cut soles is worrying me more, just now, than the fact that you have not been elected to one of the school clubs.
I realize that your not making one of the school clubs yet, is a terrible tragedy in your young life; but I feel as though you are going to survive, and perhaps you will be elected to one after all. I've found it a pretty good rule, not to figure a shipment of shoes a total loss even when the jobber writes that he's returning them, and if I were you I wouldn't borrow trouble until it's necessary. Trouble is the easiest thing in the world to borrow, and about the hardest to discount at the bank.
Maybe it's just as well you are having your touch of society chills and fever young, for it may save you from making a bigger fool of yourself later on. No one minds a young fool much, but an old one is about as sad an object as a Louisville distiller attending a Supreme Court decision on the prohibition law.
Society is all right, some of it; but just because you eat dessert at the end of your dinner, is no reason why you should make a meal of it. A little society, like the colic, goes a long way, and you want to remember that a man, like a piece of sole leather, usually figures out to what he is.