Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1885-11-07
A Fathers Letter.
Bill Nye in Detroit Post.


My DEAR SoN:-Your mother and
| was glad to get your last letter, and
to hear that you was well, though both
of us think it was little tough for you
to take up so much of it correcting our
spelling and grammar.
Your mother and | don't brag on
our edgucation, but, as common, low
browed parents, we aim to be equalled
by few and excelled by none. When
| was young, parents didn't go without
clothes so that their children could get
an edguecation, as they do now.aN
days.
My folks was poor, laundering poor,
you might say. 1t was some time
before they could afford the luxury of
Webster'S spelling book for me, and
then allow me to walk three miles in
tow shirt and pair of linsey>woolsey
pants, to the hot-bed of learning. l
hadn't been in the edgeucation business
long, before an accident happened to
my library. The school house wasn't
rugged up with furnace down stairs
and them iron refrigerators in every
room, so you can turn the warm off or
on as you want to, but it was plain.
And it cost, probably, forty-seven
dollars, including a wooden button on
the outside door, which was supposed
to hold the blamed thing shet when
school was out at night.
But one night in the early history of
my junior year, as you would call it.,
the front door of the school house got
unbuttoned, and half.starved two
year-old steer wandered in there and
spent the night. He swallowed my
text book while thinking over his past
life, and so he kind of shet off my cur
rickulum, as you would say.
! suppose | ought to have borrowed
copy of the Koran, or the Illyad, or
some other big, high-priced book, and
laid down OF my stummck and COM
mitted it to memory by the light of a
pine knot; but at that time / hadn't
read the rules for self.made men, or
every Man His Own Self.Made
Man" So / didn't know what to dc
in order to get an edgeucation, or !
would have just got it or bust.
| hate to have my children ashamed
of me, and:so does you mother. That;
all we care about. | don't care a cuss
for an edgeucation for myself, but il
grinds us to have you ashamed to show
our letters to the other boys. That's
why want you to git so you kin write
a good hand, and use big words that il
would take me year to think of
Then your children won't be ashamed
Of you when you come to be a fathel
or a mother, yourself, George.
We'd like tip-top to come down thi
spring and see you, your mother ant
I, and listen to your valetudinarian, al
you call it, and we could, too, only
very likely we'd give the whole blamed
thing away before we got through, an(
make you so 'shamed you'd wish yol
was dead.
So it's probably better for us to sta,
here and run the farm, and keep you
there as long as there's shote left; 70
| want you to get your skin so full o
knowledge that folks here won't know
what in Sam Hill you're talking abou
half the time. People here have KIM
of throwed it out from time to tim
that lacked culture, and | admit tina
/ have tried to use language on severa
occasions that | wasn't entirely familia
with; but that is neither here nor there
l want you to come home with word
on your tongues end that will make tn
neighbors' heads ache. Some of Zen
have allowed that had better hav
you come home and help support tn
family; but don't you worry about tn
family. You are there to get as muc
knowledge for the money as you car
want you to be so that when yo
come home you can get the square roc
of hay stack in two minutes, wit
your eyes shet, or talk to Hebrew, c
an Agnostic, in his own mother tongue
and 81 alfred slick that be will thin