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NEW YORK, Sept. 16, 1894.

DEAREST MIRIAM,—I would have written two or three days ago, but when I’ve had supper I’m too tired to think even. It isn’t the work at the store, either. I’m getting on all right there, and I see how I can make myself useful already. I haven’t been living in Auburnvale all these years with my eyes shut, and I’ve got an idea or two that I’m going to turn to account. No, it’s just the city itself that’s so tiring. It’s the tramp, tramp, tramp of the people all the time, day and night, never stopping. And they are all so busy always. They go tearing through the streets with their faces set, just as if they didn’t know anybody. And sometimes their mouths are working, as if they were thinking aloud. They don’t waste any time; they are everlastingly doing something. For instance, I’ve an hour’s nooning; and I go out and get my dinner in a little eating-house near the rear of our store—ten cents for a plate of roast beef; pretty thin the cut is, but the flavor is all right. Well, they read papers while they are having their dinner. They read papers in the cars coming down in the morning, and they read papers in the cars going up at night. They don’t seem to take any rest. Sometimes I don’t believe they sleep nights. And if they do, I don’t see how they can help walking in their sleep.

I couldn’t sleep myself first off, but I’m getting to now. It was the pressure of the place, the bigness of it, and the roar all round me. I’d wake up with a start, and, tired as I was, sometimes I wouldn’t get to sleep again for half an hour.

I’ve given up the place I boarded when I first come and I’ve got a room all to myself in a side street just off Fourth Avenue, between Union Square and the depot. It’s a little bit of a house, only fifteen feet wide, I guess. It’s two stories and a half, and I’ve got what they call the front hall-bedroom on the top floor. It’s teeny, but it’s clean and it’s comfortable. It’s quiet, too. The lady who keeps the house is a widow. Her husband was killed in the war, at Gettysburg, and she’s got a pension. She’s only one daughter and no son, so she takes three of us young fellows to board. And I think I’m going to like it.

Of course, I don’t want to spend any more than I have to, for I’ve got to have some money saved up if I ever expect to do anything for myself. And the sooner I can get started the sooner I can come back and carry away Miriam Chace—Miriam Forthright, as she will be then.

It seems a long way off, sometimes, and I don’t know that it wouldn’t be better to give up the idea of ever being very rich. Then we could be married just as soon as I get a raise, which I’m hoping for by New Year’s, if I can show them that I am worth it. But I’d like to be rich for your sake, Miriam—very rich, so that you could have everything you want, and more too!

Your loving

JACK.