This is the letter a little English boy wrote to his American cousin whom he never had seen. He wrote it on his slate in “print letters,” and his sister Bess copied it on paper in “writing letters.”
The words were spelled wrong on the slate. He worked four evenings to write it all.
THE WAY TOM WROTE IT.
“Dear cousin Dick:
“You thought I would like to write letters because I am old like you—ten years. But I am not a school-boy, like you. I am a home-boy. I think home-boys don’t study regular, and learn truly like school-boys. Mother says she will tell your mother in her letter about how I have been sick always.
“I think I would like to be a school-boy, but I wouldn’t either. School-boys are mean. If the new boy is lame and shy, they think that is big fun. I do not see how the tricks can be any fun then.
“If I was a school-boy I would not think it was fun to trip a lame boy up. I would not think it fun to see him splash down backward into a pool, and when he soused under and wet his lame back ice-cold, I would not call, ‘Cry-baby!’
“But that is what the school-boys did that day I went.
“So I can’t write handsome letters. Do you trick new boys the first day they come to your school in America? I have had twelve sore throats since, and I wear a scarf in the house.