The William Henry Letters

Lucy Maria to William Henry

Dear Billy, —

'T is a pity about that forefinger. Pray get it well enough to handle a pen, 't is so long since you've written. So you want home matters reported. Eatable matters of course will be most interesting. Milk and butter, plenty. Gingerbread (plain), ditto. Gingerbread (fancy), scarce. Cookies, quiet. Plum-cake, in demand. Snaps, lively. Brown-bread, firm. White-bread (sliced), dull. Biscuits (hot), brisk. Custard, unsteady. Preserves not in the market.

What do we do, and what do we talk about? Why, we talk about our cousin William Henry, and what we do can't be told within the bounds of one letter. Think of seven cows' milk to churn into butter, besides a cheese now and then, and besides working for the extra hands we hire this time o' year! I should have written to you before, when we first heard of your accident, if I could have got the time. Hannah Jane is away, and we've let Mattie go with Susie Snow to Grandma Snow's again for a few days. Grandma Snow likes to have Mattie come with Susie, for 't is rather a still, dull place. So you must think we are quite lonesome here now, and we are, especially mother. Father tells her she'd better advertise for a companion. I've a good mind to advertise to be a companion. What do companions do? The old lady might be cross, or the old gentleman, but that wouldn't hurt me, so long as I kept clever myself. Don't doubt I'd get fun out of it some way. There's fun in about everything I think.

I've been trying to get father and mother to go to Aunt Lucy's and stay all night. But father thinks there wouldn't be anybody to shut the barn-door, and mother thinks there wouldn't be anybody to do anything, though I've promised to scald the pans, and do up the starched things, and keep Tommy out of the sugar-bowl. He takes a lump every chance he can get. Takes after his father. Father puts sugar on sweetened puddings, if mother isn't looking! We've made some verses to plague Tommy, and when Mattie gets her piano, they're going to be set to music.

SONG

A Sweet Tommy

As turns the needle to the pole,
So Tommy to the sugar-bowl.
Tra la la, tra la la!
Sweet, sweet Tommy!

Tommy always takes a toll
Going by the sugar-bowl.
Tra la la, tra la la!
Sweet, sweet Tommy!

Were Tommy blind as any mole,
He'd always find the sugar-bowl.
Tra la la, tra la la!
Sweet, sweet Tommy!

He's a funny talking fellow. We took him into town last night, to see the illumination. This morning we heard him and Frankie Snow telling Benny Joyce about it. Father and I were listening behind the blinds. Made father's eyes twinkle. Don't you know how they twinkle when he's tickled?

"You didn't see the rumination and we did!" we heard Tommy say.

"Rumination? What's a rumination?" asked Benny.

"O hoo! hoo!" cried Tommy. "Denno what a rumination is!"

"Why," said Frankie, "don't you know the publicans? Wal, that's it."

"O poh!" said Benny. "Publicans and sinners! I knew they's coming!"

"And soldiers!" said Frankie. "O my! All a marching together!"

"O poh!" said Benny. "I see 'em go by. Paint-pots on their heads, and brushes in 'em! I wasn't goin' to chase!"

"Guess nobody wouldn't let ye?" said Frankie.

"Didn't either!" cried Tommy, "didn't have paint-pots!"

"Did!" said Benny. "Guess my great brother knows!"

"Guess we know," said Frankie, "when we went!"

"And the town was all celebrated," said Tommy. And the houses all gloomed up! And horses! O my!

"O poh!" said Benny. "When I grow up, I'm goin' to have a span!"

If mother does go, she'll take Tommy, for she wouldn't sleep a wink away from him over night. Father pretends he'd go if he had a handsome span. Says he hasn't got a horse in the barn good enough to take mother out riding. When Mammy Sarah was here washing, she told him how he could get a good span. You know he's always joking about taking summer boarders. Says Mammy Sarah, "Now 't is a wonder to me you don't do it, for summer boarders is as good as a gold-mine. Money runs right out of their pockets, and all you have to do is to catch it." She says we could make enough out of a couple of them, in a month's time, to buy a handsome span, and she isn't sure but the harness.

I think we begin to be a little in earnest about summer boarders. For we have rooms enough, in both houses together, and milk and vegetables, and mother's a splendid cook. Mammy Sarah says, "They ain't diffikilt, and after they've been in the country couple of weeks, they don't eat so very much more than other folks."

Father says he wants to take them more for the entertainment than the money. He wants rich ones, but not the sensible kind, that know money isn't the only thing worth having. Says what he wants is that silly, stuck-up kind, that put on airs, and make fools of themselves, they'd be so amusing! Thinks the best sort for our use would be specimens that went up quite sudden from poor to rich, like balloons, all filled with gas. I believe there'd be lots of fun to be made out of them. I've seen one or two. Gracious! You'd think they weren't born on the same planet with poor folks. Mother'd rather have the really well-informed, sensible kind, that we may learn something from them. A couple of each would be just the thing. How do you like mother's picture? We don't feel at all satisfied with it. If she could only be taken at home! Then she'd look natural. Father says the world is going ahead so fast, he believes the time will come when every family will have its own picture-machine, much as it has its own frying-pan. Then when folks have on their best expressions, why, clap it right before them. Then they'll look homish. Says what he wants is to have mother's face when she's just made a batch of uncommon light biscuits, or when Tommy's said something smart. Won't there be funny pictures when we can hold up a machine before anybody any minute, like a frying-pan, and catch faces glad, or mad, or sad, or any way? I made believe take Tommy's and then showed them to him on a piece of paper. Guess I'll put them in the letter. They'll do to amuse you. I draw an hour or so every day. First, I have to make my hour. Sometimes I have to make more. For I will read a little, if the world stops because of it. But about the faces. First one is when he was crying because he couldn't have sugar on his potatoes. Next one is when he was spunky at Frankie Snow for bursting his little red balloon. The pleased-looking face is when father brought him home a little ship all rigged, and the laughing one is when the cow put her head in the window. We tell him we'll have them framed and hung up so he can see just how he looks. Mother says 't is all very well to laugh at Tommy, but she guesses some older ones' pictures wouldn't always look smiling and pleasant, take them the year through!

As soon as your finger is itself again do write, for we miss your letters. We expect to have gay times here this summer. Company coming, but we sha' n't make company of them. Except to have splendid times. What shall we do evenings? If you go anywhere where there is anything going on, do write us about it, so we can go on the same way. When are you coming? Write me a good long letter when you can.

    Your affectionate Cousin,
    Lucy Maria.

Your father is going to write you a letter. Quite wonderful for him. O William Henry, you don't know how much I think of your father, and what a good man he is! I guess you'd better write to your grandmother before you do me; she's so pleased to have you write to her.

Father wants to know when that ball hit you if you bawled.

-

Lucy Maria's "picture-taker" made a great deal of fun for them, and possibly did some good. She constructed a queer long-handled affair, and, at the most unexpected moments, this would be thrust before the faces of different members of the family, more especially Tommy, Matilda, or Georgiana, and their "pictures" would be sure to appear to them soon after, "glad, or mad, or sad, or any way."

And the plan of "summer boarders" also furnished entertainment. The talk on this subject was quite amusing, particularly when it touched the subject of "advertising." Lucy Maria suggested this ending: —

"None but the silly, or the really well-informed need apply." But Mr. Carver thought such a notice would fail of bringing a single boarder. For silly people did not know they were silly, and the really well-informed were the very last ones to think themselves so.

William Henry to Aunt Phebe

Dear Aunt Phebe, —

I thank you for taking your time to write to me, when you have so much work to do. My forefinger has about recovered the use of itself. The middle one did go lame a spell, but now 't is very well, I thank you. Mrs. Wedding Cake did them up for me. I think she's a very kind woman. Dorry says he'd put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, or lay down his life, if she wanted him to, or anything else, for the only woman he knows that will smile on boys' mud and on boys' noise.

Ten of us went on an excursion with the teacher, half-price, to Boston, and had a long ride in the cars, over forty miles. We went everywhere, and saw lots of things. Went into the Natural History building. You can go in for nothing. You stand on the floor, at the bottom and look way up to the top. All round inside are galleries running round, with alcoves letting out of them, where they keep all sorts of unknown beasts and birds and bugs and snakes. Some of those great birds are regular smashers! 'Most dazzles your eyes to look at their feathers, they're such bright red! I'd just give a guess how tall they were, but don't believe I'd come within a foot or two. Also butterflies of every kind, besides skeletons of monkeys and children and minerals and all kinds of grasses and seeds, and nuts there such as you never cracked or thought of! They are there because they are seeds, not because they are nuts. And there's a cast of a great ugly monster, big as several elephants, that used to walk round the earth before any men lived in it. If he wasn't a ripper! Could leave his hind feet on the ground and put his fore paws up in the trees and eat the tops off! They call him a Megotharium! I hope he's spelt right, though he ought not to expect it, and I don't know as it makes much difference, seeing he lived thousands of years before the flood, and lucky he did, Dorry says, for the old ark couldn't have floated with many of that sort aboard. He wasn't named till long after he was dead and buried. Patient waiter is no loser, Dorry says, for he's got more name than the ones that live now, and is taken more notice of. We saw a cannon-ball on the side of Brattle Street Church, where 't was fired in the Revolution, and we went to the top of the State House. Made our knees ache going up so many steps, but it pays. For you can look all over the harbor, and all round the country, and see the white towns, and steeples, for miles and miles. Boston was built on three hills and the State House is on one of them. I can't write any more, now.

W. B. has left school, because his father got a place for him in New York. His father thought he was old enough to begin. He's a good deal older than I am.

    From your affectionate Nephew,
    William Henry.

How do you like this picture of that great Mego – I won't try to spell him again – eating off the tree-tops? The leaves on the trees then were different from the ones we have now. Dorry made the leaves, and I made the creature.

A Letter to William Henry from his Father

My dear Son, —