"Beverly Farms-by-the-Depot" 1918.
Dearly Beloved G.P.:
"Pink" has just brought me this little squigley piece of paper, so that my letter to you may be of the same size as hers—some people are so fussy. You sent me nine or ten bushels of love, and I have used them all up, and am hungry for more, for that kind of diet my appetite is always unappeased.
How I do wish we had you within touching distance as well as within loving distance; I have always had a great desire to see more of you since first my eyes fell upon you. I do just hate to get so old that perhaps I shall never see you again in the flesh. But I'll be sure to look for you, and now and then, when you get a particularly good piece of good luck,—I shall have had something to do with it. That does not mean that the undertaker has been called and to hear James and Sarah Elizabeth talk, you would suppose that nothing could kill me—I only mean that 84 years is serious; but, for the life of me, I never do get very serious for long at a time.
Jimmy and I have been out to Northfield for five days, went to meeting and sang psalms for seven hours a day. Jimmy takes to meetings, being as Huxley said of somebody "incurably religious"—and really I did not talk much.
The country was so sweet and beautiful, the spirit of the place was like the New Jerusalem come down again. We slept in the dormitory in the little iron beds side by side, "Each in his narrow bed forever laid", only we did not stay forever.
We meant to come home by way of the Monadnock region, and we had a few drives along the Contacook River, but we ran into a Northeaster, and came ingloriously home.
Have not you been in lovely places, and in great good fortune in your vacation? I am glad of it.
I love you—so does Jimmy—and Sambo, and so would Billy, the neighbors' dog, who hangs about me for rice and kidneys, if he knew you. As to Pink, she flourishes like a green bay horse, teaches French and is in good spirits. Molly goes away on a vacation tomorrow. Poor Jim! With us for cooks!