Читать книгу Vistas of New York - Brander Matthews - Страница 12

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NEW YORK, Dec. 2, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—You don’t know how much good it did me to get your long letter last week. You wrote just like your old self—just like the dear little girl you are! I was beginning to wonder what had come over you. I thought you had changed somehow, and I couldn’t understand it.

Of course, I wished I was in Auburnvale on Thanksgiving. I’d like to have seen you sitting in the seats and singing with your whole soul; and I’d have liked to hear your father preach one of his real inspiring sermons that lift up the heart of man.

To be all alone here in New York was desolate—and then it rained all the afternoon, too. It didn’t seem a bit like a real Thanksgiving.

I went to church, of course, but I didn’t think Dr. Thurston rose to the occasion. He didn’t tell us the reasons why we ought to be grateful as strongly as your father did last year.

Coming out of church it had just begun to rain, and so there was a crowd around the doors. As I was just at the foot of the stairs I tripped over Miss Stanwood’s dress. I tell you it made me uncomfortable when I heard it tear. But these New York girls have the pleasantest manners. She didn’t even frown. She smiled and introduced me to her father, who seemed like a nice old gentleman. He was very friendly, too, and we stood there chatting for quite a while until the crowd thinned out.

He said that if I really wanted to understand some of the Sunday-school lessons I ought to go to the Holy Land, since there are lots of things there that haven’t changed in two thousand years. He’s been there and so has his daughter. He brought back ever so many photographs, and he’s asked me to drop in some evening and look at them, as it may help me in making the boys see things clearly. It was very kind of him, wasn’t it? I think I shall go up some night next week.

I’ve been here nearly three months now, and Mr. Stanwood’s will be the first private house I shall have been to—and in Auburnvale I knew everybody and every door was open to me. I feel it will be a real privilege to see what the house of a rich man like Mr. Stanwood is like. I’ll write you all about it.

And some day I’ll buy you a house just as fine as his. That some day seems a long way off, sometimes, don’t it?

JACK.