Читать книгу Vistas of New York - Brander Matthews - Страница 10

Table of Contents

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—I was beginning to wonder what the matter was when I didn’t have a letter for a week and more. And now your letter has come, I don’t quite make it out. You write only a page and a half; and the most of that is taken up with asking about Miss Stanwood.

Yes, I see her Sundays, of course, and she is always very pleasant. Indeed, I can’t guess what it is that you have against her or why it is you are always picking at her. I feel sure that she doesn’t dye her hair, but I will look at the roots as you suggest and see if it’s the same color there. Her name is Hester—I’ve seen her write it in the library cards. Her father is very rich, they say—at least he’s president of a railroad somewhere down South.

She strikes me as a sensible girl, and I think you would like her if you knew her. She has helped me to get the right kind of books into the hands of the little Italians and other foreigners I have to teach. Most Sunday-school books are very mushy, I think, and I don’t believe it’s a healthy moral when the good boy dies young. Miss Stanwood says that sometimes when one of my scholars takes home a book it is read by every member of the family who knows how to read, and they all talk it over. So it’s very important to give them books that will help to make good Americans of them. She got her father to buy a lot of copies of lives of Washington and Franklin and Lincoln. They are not specially religious, these books, but what of it? Miss Stanwood says she thinks we must all try first of all to make men of these rough boys, to make them manly, and then they’ll be worthy to be Christians. She is thinking not only of the boys themselves, but of the parents too, and of the rest of the family; and she says that a little leaven of patriotism suggested by one of these books may work wonders. But you are quite right in saying that I’m not as lonely as I was a month ago. Of course not, for I’m getting used to the bigness of the place and the noise no longer wears on me. Besides, I’ve found out that the New-Yorkers are perfectly willing to be friendly. They’ll meet you half-way always, not only in the church, but even down-town, too. I ain’t afraid of them any more, and I can tell a conductor to let me out at the corner now without wishing to go through the floor of the car. Fact is, I’ve found out how little importance I am. Up at Auburnvale people knew me; I was old John Forthright’s only son; I was an individual. Here in New York I am nobody at all, and everybody is perfectly willing to let me alone. I think I like it better here; and before I get through I’ll force these New-Yorkers to know me when they see me in the street—just as they touch each other now and whisper when they pass old Ezra Pierce.

Write soon and tell me there’s nothing the matter with you. I’m all right and I’d send you my love—but you got it all already.

JACK.