Page Allison from Dr. James Allison of Milton, Va.:

Bracken, April .., 19...

Mammy Susan and I were very glad to hear from you. You are a nice girl to write such a fine, long letter to a mere afterthought. If you write that splendid a letter to a mere afterthought, what would you do for a beforethought?

Your new friends sound delightful. I wish I might know them. The only kick I have about being nothing but a country doctor is that I meet so few new people. Of course it is interesting work, and I am not out of love with it, but sometimes I do get a weeny, teeny bored with poor Sally Winn's aches and pains, and wish either she had some new aches or she could tell about them in a more scintillating manner. Some new people are moving into our neighborhood, the Carters. Of course, as the name indicates, they are not new people except to our neighborhood. They have taken the old overseer's cottage on the Grantly estate, leased it from the two Miss Grants for a year, and are coming bag and baggage in a few days. I don't know how many of them there are, but I believe it is quite a family of girls and one or more boys and a mother and father, one of them an invalid. More pink pump water to be concocted by yours truly, I fancy. I hope they will be agreeable, since no doubt we will have to see something of them. The cottage is in miserable repair, and I only hope it will not tumble down on them. If they are coming to our county for fresh air, they will get it there winter and summer, as there are cracks in the walls as big as those in a corn crib. Pretty lawn, though, about the prettiest I know of anywhere, and trees that make me think of Tennyson's "immemorial elms." I shall not call on these new neighbors until you come home—that is, unless I am sent for to come and bring some pink pump water.

I have had a letter from General Price, Harvie's grandfather, asking for the pleasure of your company in the month of July on a house-party he is giving his grandson. It is such a dignified, ponderous epistle that I am afraid I shall have to send to Richmond for the proper stationery with which to reply. Nothing less than crested vellum could possibly carry my acceptance. The King of England could not observe more form were you being invited to put in two weeks at Windsor. It is very kind of him, however, to ask my little girl, and I hope by the aid of the dictionary to express myself with ease and verbosity in acknowledging the honor. Of course you want to go?

I shall be pleased to have the volume of Henry Timrod's poems. I'd like to see the Coogler poems, too. I enjoyed the extracts immensely. I have often heard of him and remember reading some reviews of his stuff when it came out years ago, before you were born, but I have never seen any of it. His efforts were so impossible that the reviewers treated him, one and all, with mock seriousness, and I believe I have heard he took them all seriously and thought he was being praised when they were only poking fun at him. It is rather pathetic, I think, although of course he was an awful blockhead.

Mammy Susan was pleased at your account of the flowers in Charleston, and hopes you can send her a few clippin's. Her things are doing very well, and her lemon verbena has grown so that I tell her we shall have to build a lean-to to keep it in. She misses you very much and is beginning to count the days to the middle of May, when I assure her you will be back with us.

I hope your ankle is behaving itself. You do not mention it, so I fancy it is. Please remember me most kindly to all the Tuckers—father and daughters. I hope you are not bothering Jeffry Tucker by being with them too much. I think there is such a thing as the best friend wearing out her welcome by staying too long. I am sending you a check for your expenses. You have not divulged how much your board will be, but if I do not make the check large enough, please inform me directly. A sickly winter means a little more money in the bank in the spring for a country doctor. Thank goodness, however, the spring seems to be a healthy one. I'd like to be a Chinese doctor and be paid only when my patients stay well. Sometimes it saddens me to feel that my living depends on disease.

Good-by, my dear little daughter.

Father.