Dear Mama and Papa: You talk about us not sending you any venison. If I had any money I would send you enough to make you sick. I went hunting with the boys this morning. Jim, Hudson and I went together. Bud drove with the dogs. Jake and Frank went together. Frank took his shotgun and he got lost from Jake, went to shooting robins. Jake got on an island and did not know where he got on at. He had to wade a stream two feet deep. After we had been looking for a stand we heard a shot behind us, and then a rifle shot to the right of us, and three blows of Bud's horn, which means dead deer. Jake was the first one to him, being only 300 yards. We walked two and one-half miles before we got to him. When we got there he had a big doe laying over a log. Bud drew him and they took turns carrying him home. Every tooth in my head aches from chewing venison. How are all of you? I waded about 30 ditches today over my shoe tops and one over my knees. Bud said if I followed the dogs with him he would give me first shot, and if I missed he would get him. Millie made me a belt to fit the rifle cartridges. I christened my axe in deer blood. Bud said Queen was 10 feet behind it, King 20 feet and Diamond ran up and threw the deer after it was shot. Then it got up and Diamond got it in the throat and brought it down. I will have to close as it is time to go to bed. With love to all,
William.
Not bad for an 11-year-old. Everyone has been complaining of the terrible weather here—frost three nights last week, and a light overcoat not oppressive, though it is hardly necessary except for the tendency one has to put his hands in his pockets otherwise. We asked one of the natives what they would do in Chicago with zero weather, and he replied with an air of conviction: "Freeze to death."
We have a nibble for the boat. The river at Memphis is so full of floating ice that the ferry boats cannot run; and that looks as if we might not be able to get our boats towed to St. Louis before late spring—and we want to be free. We note blooming in the open many violets, polyanthus narcissus, camellias, sweet olive, magnolias just budding out, and white hyacinths. The grass is putting up green shoots. Large beds of chickweed are plentiful. The vinca was nipped by frost last night. Next door is a fine palmetto and the great roses covering the gallery are full of green leaves and the remains of the last crop of blossoms, with new buds coming out. What a terrible winter!
There is a street fair here. These people go about the country and exhibit wherever they find a town that will pay them, their price here being, it is said, $2,000 for a week. The Red Men pay them, and probably the merchants subscribe to it, the business brought to town compensating them. There are a number of attractions, like a little splinter broken off the poorest part of Atlantic City. But it gives something to see and do and talk about, to a town where there is too little of either for the demand. There are a huge and a dwarf horse, glass blowers, a human dwarf, contortionist, jubilee singers, kinetoscope, trained dogs and monkeys, dissolving statue, and of course the nigger babies and knives to throw at and miss. We have run against these aggregations all the way down, and they are evidently becoming a feature of the smaller towns.
Curious place for a State Capital. In our room stands a fine walnut wardrobe with a door broken open; and there is not a mechanic in the city who can mend it. Glass is broken, and it remains so; any quantity of miscellaneous mending and repairing needed, but it stands. The sunny south is a bit slipshod; the ladies are delightful, but they do not work their finger ends off cleaning out the last possibilities of dust and dirt—they leave it to the darkies, who do what they cannot avoid doing and stop right there.
That our boys are not devoid of descriptive ability—and imagination?—this chapter, written by Frank, will demonstrate.
"At Melville, on the Atchafalaya, we became acquainted with some young men who had a fine pack of deer hounds. They also call these "nigger dogs," because they are employed for trailing convicts who escape from the camps along the river.
"Early in the morning our hunting party gathered on the levee—the Doctor, Budd Tell, his brother Wylie, and two uncles, and four of us. The old men were settlers and hunters of bobcat, deer, panther, bear and other game. They said they had killed 160 deer in one winter, and though we doubted this, we afterward found it was true.