Your brief and dignified note of yesterday is at hand. I have never known anybody whose literary style resembled so exactly his spoken word.
And you will be greatly obliged if I will drop my absurd fashion of calling you "Enemy"? I will drop my absurd fashion of calling you Enemy just as soon as you drop your absurd fashion of getting angry and abusive and insulting the moment any little thing goes wrong.
I am leaving tomorrow afternoon to spend four days in New York.
Yours truly,
S. McBRIDE.
CHEZ THE PENDLETONS, New York. My dear Enemy:
I trust that this note will find you in a more affable frame of mind than when I saw you last. I emphatically repeat that it was not due to the carelessness of the superintendent of our institution that those two new cases of measles crept in, but rather to the unfortunate anatomy of our old-fashioned building, which does not permit of the proper isolation of contagious cases.
As you did not deign to visit us yesterday morning before I left, I could not offer any parting suggestions. I therefore write to ask that you cast your critical eye upon Mamie Prout. She is covered all over with little red spots which may be measles, though I am hoping not. Mamie spots very easily.
I return to prison life next Monday at six o'clock.
Yours truly,