BY GASTON V. DRAKE.
I.
FROM BOB TO JACK.
New York, June 4, 1895.
DEAR JACK,—I don't think they's going to be much chance for us to see each other this summer, for where do you suppose we're going to go to? You'd never guess. Hoboken! It's a queer place for a summer resort, and Pop says there ain't much to do there, only, he says, getting there's going to be fun. He says about the only thing people do in Hoboken is to leave it in the morning and go back to it that night, which I can't say strikes me as quite so much fun as being off there in the White Mountains, with you getting scared at 'maginary bears, playing wild Indian, fishing, rowing, playing tricks on bell-boys, and all that. It may be just as Pop says, that living in Hoboken and going to business in New York is a great thing for a man, because it makes going to business a pleasure, but for a boy I don't see what good it is. Even if it's true that Hoboken people don't need yachts, because they've always got the ferry-boats handy for sailing, I can't get excited over the idea of going there. There ain't any fishing, and as for hunting, Pop says there's nothing wild there except Trolly Cars, and I never could see what fun there was in hunting trolly cars. They arrest you for even throwing stones at 'em in Brooklyn—I know that because I read it in a newspaper. There was a boy who lived in a crowded part of Brooklyn where there never was any birds and precious few dogs, and as he was the kind of boy that had to throw stones at something, he flung a few at the trolly cars, and a policeman caught him and took him to court, and the judge made his father pay ten dollars to get him set free again, and, of course, when he got him free again and took him home, you and I know what the boy got, which I don't think isn't fun. I haven't got any use for throwing stones at birds or dogs or trolly cars, but, as far as I can find out, Hoboken's very much like Brooklyn in not having anything else to hunt, even in fun. It hasn't got any woods for Indians to hide in, and not a cave anywhere around.