With his usual respect for why and wherefore, he explains “the reasons” that he did not board at a certain place. The love of music, which remained as long as he lived, was active then. “I have as much music as I want, as he has a number of music-boxes. He has one in particular which is the best he ever saw. I have got it under my nose now; it is playing Napoleon’s March, which is splendid.”
A Mr. Bird married a Mrs. Fish, and Walter Aimwell either originated, or appreciated, the following lines. Without any allusion to the authorship, he inserts them in this letter to his mother:—
“A Bird caught a Fish, and when he had caught her
He loved her too well to devour or to slaughter;
And fearing she’d feel like a fish out of water,
To Watertown safely and kindly he brought her.”
He speaks affectionately of all the family, sending polite messages to two of his brothers, and a comical one to please the youngest. And, after writing a much longer and better letter than most boys would have written under the most favorable circumstances, he says, “I can’t write any more, as I don’t write more than one word before somebody comes in and disturbs me.”
I have shown his worst imperfections. It is as likely that they were owing to his interruptions and necessary haste, as to ignorance or indifference. The whole letter is creditable in plan and execution; and it makes the impression that he was contented and delighted with his place, his business, and his employer.
It almost seems something to be regretted that he did not remain in such happy circumstances; but it seldom happens that the place that seems most pleasant to us, and the circumstances that are most easy for us, are those which are most beneficial to ourselves, or in which we can be most useful. And, after all, a consciousness of being truly useful is the most satisfactory of all pleasures; and it confers upon a person a kind of dignity that nothing else does.