Jimmy has a room, and he sweeps it sometimes. I sleep with Jimmy. There isn’t any woman to make up the bedclothes. We fix ’em. It isn’t very hard. You just pull them up and tuck them down. There is a gong, and that makes you get up and eat breakfast. The breakfast is good. It is a round thing, and a girl pounds it. You put five tea-spoons of sugar in your tea-cup. A girl sits on the other side. There is lots of tables, and they make a noise. By and by, one gets through and walks out. There is a lock on the door, and that makes you hurry up or you can’t have any breakfast. You can’t get in. The ten cents is ’most gone. I hope you will write me again pretty soon.—Your son, Dickerson H.
P. S.—The peace of paper has got the days on it, and we scratch them off every night. There is sixty-one more to scratch off, and that will make it vacation.D. H.
November 3, 1877.
Dear Mother: There is ’bout ten pianos here, and folks play on them all the while. It sounds pretty. You can’t tell what tune they play ’most always. Mr. Wiseman has an noffice, and that’s where you have to go when you want to do things. Sometimes you have to go when you don’t want to do things. He sits in a chair and his legs go under the table. There’s a square hole where his legs go. It has a slate on it, and he writes your name on it. It don’t feel good. You ought to have seen Jim one day. He fell into the river, but he got out. There is a river. He had the cookies in his pocket. They were just as good, except the soap. He had some soap too, and that wasn’t very good. Jim didn’t get dry pretty soon, and he had the neuraligy or the toothache. The side of his cheek swelled out as big as a foot-ball. He went to the office. He was sicker. I made up the bed for a week, and he felt better. We went in swimming five times yesterday. We have to treat. All men have to treat. It’s molasses-candy and it’s pop-corn. To treat is to pay for what a nother feller eats. The button come off of my shirt. I lost it, but I sewed on one of the black ones like the ones on my jacket. The place to sew it on came out too, but I sewed it one side. It made my thumb bleed.—Your son, Dickerson Hardin.
November 17, 1877.
Dear Mother: Jim has got a box. His mother sent it to him. The other boys have boxes. We have to have boxes, ’cause they have hash that is made out of boots. It is not good to eat. The soup tastes like a tooth-pick. The butter is a thousand years old. A girl said so. If I should have a box, I think it would be good for me. Put in some cookies and some apples and cake and cheese and chicken-pie and a neck-tie and apple-pie and fruit-cake and that other kind of jelly-cake and some cookies and stockings and cans of fruit and fish-hooks and pop-corn and molasses and cookies. Jim found a half a dollar in his box, down to the bottom. It was for his neuraligy. My throat is not quite well yet.
I take drawing. There is a nice lady to teach it. She wears a white sack with red pockets, and a blue bow. She pulls her hair down over her head. She says we must draw things, when we look at them. I drew a dog, but it came out a lamb. I can make a very nice bird. Jim put the feathers on to the tail.
Mr. Wiseman has got some snakes in some bottles, and a frog and a toad. He has got some grasshoppers with a pin stuck through them, and a spider and some potato-bugs. It is the museum. He thinks a great deal of them.