The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1893-08-10

that I've stood by you and paid every
thing from having a dollar beefsteak
ready to put on your eye whenever you
got into trouble even to getting you
properly matriculated. I don't blame
you, you know, that you accept hospi-
talities from wealthy people to come and
spend your summers with their sons,
learning to smoke big French brier
pipe with stem that makes rising on
your cheek, but in that part<of your let
ter where you ask for more means you
pierce me to the heart. 97' ,'f z.
Could you not come home and spend
your vacation where there's nanght to
make afraid where we will give you
your victuals and exercise for nothing?
There with the wealthy, as you say, you
have to spend some money to keep up
your end of the business. Of course, if
they ask you what you'll have, I'd like
to have you ask them what they'll have.
But now, honest, don't it look kind of
scandalous for me and your mother to
be here, year in and year out, eating
plain victuals and wearing out your old
clothes while you are having sort of
hitey-titey time of it with the wealthy?
Naturally you are a good, solid boy, and
not bad looking nor bad behaved, and
you've got good blood too.
What mean by that is that yor7've
got no inherited traits whatever. Your
father never took glass of liquor till he
was one and twenty, and then purely by
accident, and your mothers folks are all
abstainers. Inever see such moral people
as they are. They never use tobacco in
any form, and the only three times thatI
have taken liquor myself was when you
was born, when peace was declared in
1865, and when Sullivan was drugged by
Corbett and then drug out of the ring by
the heels. I've had to take year to con-
vince your mothers folks that was not
continually under the influence of rum.
Your mothers family is so good that
they'd be real good if they didn't know
they was 80 blamed good.
But you must not try to be so good as
they are. Ihave been happier and better
since gave it up. One day great joy
came to me. A voice said inside of me:
''Be of good cheer. You cannot be so
good as your wife's folks. No man was
ever so good as his wife's folks. Give it
up. It will drive you to drink. Do the
best you can, and, verify, you will be
surprised" So great wad of peace
seemed to settle down on me, and am
indeed blessed.
All of our folks, though, have been
plain. honest, hand to mouth people.
You are the first one to go to college and
find out the weak places in the Scrip
lures.
You are the smartest young man that
we have seen in many of our monotoneus
generations, and knew more about things
when you was freshman than any one
in the whole history of our race, includ-
ing your mothers folks, for quite bunch
Of centuries. For 1900 years we have
called the whale fish in our family,
though there was three generations Of
whalers on my side and two on your
mothers that didn't know any better.
You speak in your letter Of two mat
ters that are bothering you-frst, the love
of very beautiful girl, whose daguerre-
otype you inclose, and. second, the need
of $65 to buy rowing machine with.
Possibly it would be as well to refer to
the money matter first.
You have always been frank with me,
Henry, especially about money matters.
That has made me hustle more than
otherwise would have done. { So will
be frank with you. f You can get along
without the rowing machine, T wish you
would. make no bones ok telling You
that times was never scarcer than at
present.