"Sometimes I listen instead of studying. I would listen to this if your letter were not due for the mail to-morrow. Father sits and smiles, and Mr. Holmes walks up and down with his arms behind him as he used to do during recitation in school. Perhaps he does it now, only you and I are not there to see. I wish you were here to listen to him; father speaks now and then, but the dialogue soon develops into a monologue and the master entertains and instructs us all. If you do not receive this letter on time know that it is because I am learning about the Jew; how he is everywhere proving the truth of prophecy by becoming a resident of every country. And yet while he is a Jew he has faces of all colors. In the plains of the Ganges, he is black; in Syria, lighter and yet dusky; in Poland his complexion is ruddy and his hair as light as yours. There was a little Jewess boarding around here last summer as olive as I imagine Rebekah and Sarah, and another as fair and rosy as a Dane. But have you enough of this? Don't you care for what Livingstone says or Humboldt? Don't you want to know the four proofs in support of unity of origin? I do, and if I write them I shall remember them; 1. Bodily Structure. 2. Language. 3. Tradition. 4. Mental Endowment. Now he is telling about the bodily structure and I do want to listen.—And I have listened and the minute hand of the clock has been travelling on and my pen has been still. But don't you want to know the ten conclusions that have been established—I know you do. And if I forget, I'll nudge Morris and ask him. Oh, I see (by looking over his shoulder) he has copied them all in one of his exercise books.
"You may skip them if you want to, but I know you want to see if your experience in your extensive travels correspond with the master's authority. Now observe and see if the people in Washington—all have the same number of teeth, and of additional bones in their body. As that may take some time, and seriously interfere with your 'business' and theirs, perhaps you had better not try it. And, secondly, they all shed their teeth in the same way (that will take time also, so, perhaps, you may better defer it until your wedding trip, when you have nothing else to do); and, thirdly, they all have the upright position, they walk and look upward; and, fourthly, their head is set in every variety in the same way; fifthly, they all have two hands; sixthly, they all have smooth bodies with hair on the head; seventhly, every muscle and every nerve in every variety are the same; eighthly, they all speak and laugh; ninthly, they eat different kind of food, and live in all climates; and, lastly, they are more helpless and grow more slowly than other animals. Now don't you like to know that? And now he has begun to talk about language and I must listen, even if this letter is never finished, because language is one of my hobbies. The longer the study of language is pursued the more strongly the Bible is confirmed, he is saying. You ought to see Morris listen. His face is all soul when he is learning a new thing. I believe he has the most expressive face in the world. He has decided to be a sailor missionary. He says he will take the Gospel to every port in the whole world. Will takes Bibles and tracts always. Morris reads every word of The Sailors Magazine and finds delightful things in it. I have almost caught his enthusiasm. But if I were a man I would be professor of languages somewhere and teach that every word has a soul, and a history because it has a soul. Wouldn't you like to know how many languages there are? It is wonderful. Somebody says—Adelung (I don't know who he is)—three thousand and sixty-four distinct languages, Balbi (Mr. Holmes always remembers names) eight hundred languages and five thousand dialects, and Max Müller says there are nine hundred known languages. Mr. Holmes can write a letter in five languages and I reverence him, but what is that where there are, according to Max Müller, eight hundred and ninety-five that he does not know a word of? Mr. Holmes stands still and puts his hands in front of him (where they were meant to be), and says he will tell us about Tradition to-morrow night, as he must go up to his den and write letters. But he does say Pandora's box is the story of the temptation and the fall. You know she opened her box out of curiosity, and diseases and wars leaped out to curse mankind. That is a Greek story. The Greek myths all seem to mean something. Father says: 'Thank you for a pleasant evening,' as Mr. Holmes takes his lamp to leave us, and he says: 'You forget what I have to thank you all for.'
"My heart bursts with gratitude to him, sometimes; I have his books and I have him; he is always ready so gently and wisely to teach and explain and never thinks my questions silly, and Morris says he has been and is his continual inspiration. And we are only two out of the many whom he stimulates. He says we are his recreation. Dull scholars are his hard work. Morris is never dull, but I can't do anything with geometry; he outstripped me long ago. He teaches me and I do the best I can. He has written on his slate, 'Will you play crambo?' Crambo was known in the time of Addison, so you must know that it is a very distinguished game. Just as I am about to say 'I will as soon as this page is finished,' father yawns and looks up at the clock. Mother remarks: 'It is time for worship, one of the children will read, father.' So while father goes to the door to look out to see what kind of a night it is and predict to-morrow and while mother closes her book with a lingering, loving sigh, and Morris pushes his books away and opens the Bible, I'll finish my last page. And, lo, it is finished and you are glad that stupidity and dullness do sometime come to an abrupt end.
"FRIEND MARJORIE."
* * * * *
"In the Schoolroom, Jan. 23, 18—.
"MY BLESSED MOTHER:
"Your last note is in my breast pocket with all the other best things from you. What would boys do without a breast pocket, I wonder. There is a feeling of study in the very air, the algebra class are 'up' and doing finely. The boy in my seat is writing a note to a girl just across from us, and the next thing he will put it in a book and ask, with an unconcerned face, 'Mr. Holmes, may I hand my arithmetic to somebody?' And Mr. Holmes, having been a fifteen-year-old boy himself, will wink at any previous knowledge of such connivings, and say 'Yes,' as innocently! It isn't against the rules to do it, for Mr. Holmes, never, for a moment, supposes such a rule a necessity. But I never do it. Because Marjorie doesn't come to school. And a pencil is slow for all I want to say to her. She is my talisman. I am a big, awkward fellow, and she is a zephyr that is content to blow about me out of sheer good will to all human kind. But, in school, I write notes to another girl, to my mother. And I write them when I have nothing to say but that I am well and strong and happy, content with the present, hopeful for the future, looking forward to the day when you will see me captain of as fine a ship as ever sailed the seas. And won't I bring you good things from every country in the world, just because you are such a blessed mother to
"Your unworthy boy,