“Only till the latter part of this month before the Exhibition, and then comes vacation which I long for very much. Every Friday the boys act a drama; the last one was ‘Love in ’76,’ and it was perfectly splendid and the one before that was ‘Romance under Difficulties,’ and that was better than the last. I wish you could send me up some small dramas because I would like to read them.
“The principal thing among the boys is catching mice with little box traps, (like the one that Grandpa made two or three summers ago) which we make ourselves. One of the boys took some hoopskirt and made a cage to keep his mice in and I made two and have got four traps. The boy that made the first trap made the first cage and he is a very ingenious boy his name is Charley Howard he is a nice boy and is liked throughout this whole great institution as well as the other boys too.
“It is a very unpleasant day first in the morning it snowed and next it rained and now it is snowing again and looks as if it would snow a long while it is dark dismal and foggy.
“I am very sorry that Cotty has so many boils, because I can imagine how they feel but you must tell him he must try to be as patient as Job if he can. The other evening I touched the tip end of my nose to the stove pipe the stove pipe being hot burnt the tip of my nose off so now everywhere I go I am laughed at. It don’t hurt me any to be laughed at if they leave my nose alone that is all I ask.
“The other day I was sliding out in the grove on the ice and I slipped and fell and struck on my sore knee and now it cracks just like it did first, only it don’t hurt me so much, but I guess I will get over it before long. I am known in this school by the name of Fatty and Pussy and am so used to it that I take it as my own name.
“Please ask Julie and Henry if they think that they are big enough to read letters, and if they say yes tell them I will write to them you tell me in your next letter. In your answer let Hubie write as he did in one of your letters.
“And now as I have written you a long letter I will stop. Sending love to you all and give them all a kiss for me.
“From your aff. Willie.
“P. S. Excuse bad writing as I have a sore finger.”
The same winter he wrote to his sister; and surely nothing could be more delightfully artless than the patronizing little moral harangue with which the letter begins—a strain which ends in such complacent satisfaction over his own success as a good boy! It must have been mightily encouraging to the little girl. But when he drops into narrative and gives such a vivid account of his skating adventures, one begins to feel the real boy’s heart again: