"I am hoping next vacation
I may visit you a while.
In this out-of-way location
It's so hard to know the style.
"Will you try and match the sample
I enclose—be sure it's green.
Get three yards—that will be ample.
Velvet, mind, not velveteen.
"Gentle mother worries badly,
And she thinks it is a shame
That a man like Dr. Hadley
Lets you play that football game.
"For the way they hurt each other
Seems so barbarously rude—
No, you've not been raised, dear brother,
To do anything so crude.
"And those horrid meals at college—
Not what you're accustomed to.
It is hard, this quest for knowledge,
But be brave.
"Your sister, Boo."
"P.S.—
"If it's not too great a bother
And a mental overtax,
Would you send your poor old father,
C.O.D., a battle-axe?"
THE COURTIN'
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
God makes sech nights, all white an' still
Fur 'z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,
All silence an' all glisten.