June 16, 19—
Dear Ted:
Well son the school year is about over now and taking it all in all you haven't done so badly. Of course that probation mess last winter was not at all to my liking, and I could have survived the shock of a higher average of marks for the year, still I think you have given promises of better things to come.
When I asked you last Sunday what you intended doing this summer vacation, thinking you had planned hanging around home most of the time, I must say I was startled to learn the itinerary you had laid out for yourself. It looks as though you were going to be about as busy as the Prince of Wales was when he was visiting in New York, and he was busier than a one-armed paper hanger with St. Vitus dance.
Now I never believed in bringing you up on the all work and no play theory, but from the jobs you've set yourself I should judge you will be working harder at playing this summer than you ever did at anything else.
Newport, Narragansett, Magnolia, Kenneybunkport, and Bar Harbor are not exactly the places I should choose to get rested in for a coming year of work, but you are young and maybe you can stand it. Still I don't want you to make the mistake I did the year of the panic.
Nineteen seven was some year for me. Business was so jumpy I never knew when I came home at night whether the next day would bring the sheriff into the factory, or whether I might get a big order that would float me safely over the rocks. By June, I had lost thirty pounds and couldn't sleep nights, but the sheriff wore a disappointed look when I met him, and I didn't have to walk on the opposite sidewalk when I passed the Company's store in Boston.
Your Ma had been doing considerable worrying about my being overworked, and when I had pulled things around so that I could breathe again, she suggested a vacation. I agreed having in my mind a nice, quiet, little village on the Maine coast, where I could lie around in the sun and dose, or go fishing when I felt real rambunctious. Now your Ma, had just been reading a book called, "The Invigoration of the Human Mind and Body," by some fellow with a string of letters after his name.
Professor Wiseacre claimed that to get a thorough rest a person should spend his vacations in doing exactly the opposite from what he did the rest of the year, and as much as I should like to I can't quarrel with him about that, but what I am ready to go to the mat with him for, was his elaboration of this theory into the fact that if a person kept away from society most of the year, his vacation should be spent in the midst of its giddy whirl.
Your Ma was thoroughly sold on this idea, although I calculate she didn't have to be persuaded much harder than a shoe jobber does to take a thousand cases at present prices, when he thinks the market is going up.