make half my lunch on rice. We are going to keep quiet this week.
From your Affectionate Son,
HENRY.
June 28, ’76.
DEAR HELEN,
I have barely time to answer yours. I am having a jolly time up here, despite the fact that I am absent from you. I eat lots up here. I am very sorry that I cannot be in Honolulu to see the fun. How I wish I could see the big sights that are going to be seen on the Fourth. I have been out to Papaikou once since I have been here. I expected to have had a miserable time going out and coming in, but instead of that I enjoyed the ride, both in and out. It looks a little familiar, but not much. We have had very little milk, and I have hardly tasted it since I have been up here, but David Hitchcock and all are going to Kona in the steamer this week, and so we will have their cows; so we will have plenty of milk. I have had four or five water-lemons since I have been up here. Ellie has been sick. She is not quite well yet.
Yours truly,
HENRY.
P’S.—Your school has a vacation now, has it not? Goodbye.
CLEVELAND, O., March 10, ’78.
DEAR FOLKS AT HOME,
We mail the letters to-morrow for Honolulu, and I must send a little, just to let you know that I am alive and kicking. Jamie decided to go up to Cleveland, and I thought I should like to go with him, so here I am at Henry’s. Will and I slept on the floor last night, and got along very well indeed. I study Grecian history next term, and am trying to make it up this vacation, as it will save me so much time next term. I think I shall succeed in doing so. The book has 240 pages. I have now read about 230. School begins next Tuesday at 12 o’clock, so I will have two more days to review in. Jamie and Cousin Henry have gone to church, like good boys, while Will and I stay at home; but Will and I are aiming at long life. They have a great deal of respect for Sunday here. Our ears are saluted by the sound of a little girl skipping rope in the hall, while we have but to turn toward the window to see a parcel of boys engaged in a game of base-ball. So you see these games are able to tempt folks to do evil, as well as some others which are looked upon as very wicked. So we see the wrongfulness of a game consists in the use made of it, not in the game itself. Therefore one game, however much it may be the custom to make a wrong use of it, is as lawful as another, provided the right use is made of it. Therefore cards is as lawful as base-ball. What nonsense I am writing! I expect you will learn a great deal and get a great many new ideas from this homily.
Will and I took a long walk this morning before breakfast. We went out to the park, and then went way down to the end of some long piers, at the ends of which were two lighthouses. Jamie and I got breakfast at a restaurant, but Will and the other Henry, my illustrious namesake, are boarding themselves.
I have had a very good time this vacation, and am sorry it is coming to an end. It hardly has time to get fairly commenced before it ends. But such is life: ‘Tis but a vapor that vanisheth away, etc. Jamie and Henry have come home. Those boys that were playing ball are now varying their amusement by pegging a top, and their loud voices come up here through my window, dispelling the Sabbath stillness, it ought to be, but there is not much stillness to dispel around here just now. The boys are eating oranges now, and I suppose I ought to help them. We get oranges very cheap at Oberlin now, at about thirty cents a dozen, and I think they are pretty good too. There are cocoanuts, too. around at the groceries, but I imagine they are some that Noah—he lived in a tropical climate, did he not?—had left over from his supply in the ark, and I am not anxious to try them. It is possible that I may be mistaken, however.
My sheet is coming to an end, and my ideas never had a beginning, so I will cease to bore you.
Affectionately yours,
HENRY.
OBERLIN, OHIO, May 6, ’78.
DEAR SISTER MARY,
I believe your birthday is approaching, and I am able to give you nothing better than to bore you with a letter—a pretty thin present, I think, especially from such a poor hand at letter-writing as I am; but I will do my best, and you can take this juvenile spurt at what it is worth. We had a lecture from a gentleman by the name of Mr Phillips a few weeks ago for Thursday lecture. We have had a good many missionary addresses lately, all interesting, this being no exception. He spoke upon the missionary field in India, and told us a good many interesting and funny stories, so that the lecture was very interesting and entertaining. One of these stories was about the degradation of women there. The children, that is, the girls, they never send to school, regarding them as entirely incapable of learning. They would about as soon think of sending a cow to school as a girl. Sensible! Don’t you think so? It is one of the most repulsive things to me, of anything in this world, to see every single day girls—yes, girls—beat the boys in Latin. It makes the hot blush of shame mantle high on my cheek, to see my sex so put to shame by paltry girls. I think girls should keep their proper place, I do! (Hem!) But to return to my story. Some missionary finally succeeded in persuading some parents to let their girls go to school for an experiment, and two girls went. Well, after a while, there was a general examination of all the schools, and four or five hundred boys were assembled, and those two girls. Well, those two girls spelt down the whole five hundred boys. One girl stood until there were about five boys left standing, and then went down. The other girl spelt them all down. Disgusting fact! A fact repulsive, exceedingly repulsive, to my feelings as an individual of the superior sex. Women, as I said before, should be kept down. They are an inferior class anyhow. Another story that he told us was as follows: Monkeys are among their gods. One time a whole troop of these came down into a village and commenced to eat up all the cucumbers and other vegetables in the gardens. The people dared not touch them themselves, but they entreated Mr Phillips and his father to drive them away. Whereupon Mr Phillips went out with his gun, and made great havoc among them. When he was through, a little boy came up to him and said that he had not killed them all, the patriarch of the whole tribe was left, and he must be sure and kill him for he bit the boys. He found him at the top of a large tree, and shot him dead. When he fell down, the boys were delighted, and fell to beating his body. Mr Phillips said it reminded him of the boys, who, having killed a dog that made away with sheep, pounded him with clubs. On being remonstrated with, and told that it was cruel to do so, and asked why they did it, they replied that they wanted him to know that there was punishment after death. This brought down the house.
Your Affectionate Brother,
HENRY.
NEW YORK CITY, Friday, June 27, ’79.
DEAR, DARLING, LONESOME, DESERTED MOTHER,
How are you, way off in that lonesome, out-of-the-way, poky place? Are you, though desolate, “yet all undaunted, in that desert land enchanted, in that home by horror haunted? Tell me, tell me, I implore. Is there, is there balm in Gilead? Tell me, truly, I implore, etc.” Or are you lonesome, and not at all “undaunted,” and have you found the “balm” reputed to be in Gilead a minus, or having the virtues of ordinary “patent medicine”? I sadly fear that the latter is the correct view of the case. Possibly you miss even such a little “dead-beat” (the old word again) as I am. If so, I suppose, on the principle that Byron illustrates in saying: “My very chains and I grew friends,” “I learned to love despair,” “Even I regained my freedom with a sigh,” etc.
However, I am not there to abuse you any longer, Mother. I probably will not be for some time to come. Our preparations are well nigh all made, for, as you know, we start to-morrow. I have my valise yet to pack, but everything is lying out on the bed, ready to be put in.
