Lynn, Mass.
February 28, 19—
Dear Ted:
I did considerable wondering while you were home last week, why it was your clothes carried a reek that seemed a cross between a tannery vat and a grease extractor.
Your Ma says "stink" is vulgar. Maybe it is, but it's good plain English, and it describes that poison gas you seemed to be carrying around with you, better than any such ladylike word as smell.
I wasn't wise until you stopped at the corner on the way to the station and lighted one. I was looking out the window at the time, and it made me plumb disgusted to see you swagger off polluting the air with a cigarette.
Now I never believed in raising a boy on "Don't." When you say "Don't" do a thing, the average person at once wants to do the very thing you tell him not to do, although before you had forbidden it, you probably could not have hired him to do it. "Don'ts" were what got the Germans in bad.
When I was in Berlin in '99 attending the International Shoe Manufacturers' Congress, there were "Verboten" signs on pretty nearly everything. "Verboten" is German for "Keep off the Grass," or something like that, anyway it means "Don't," and every time I saw one of those blamed signs, I immediately wanted to do what was forbidden.