Grandview, Mo.
May 3, 1911
Dear Bessie,
I don't care what kind of paper you write on. I should be just as pleased to get a letter from you on wrapping paper as on the finest stationery build. So write whether you have any stationery or not although that last looked good enough for anybody to me.
I am sorry to hear of your chickens dying. Momma has lost quite a number though. She says it is the cold damp weather more than anything else-and then some of hers she says have been supporting families upon themselves. She is going to dip them as soon as the weather will permit and then she says they'll be all right.
I had a letter from Nellie saying she was going to quit teaching in Independence and go down to Sugar Creek. They offered her a larger salary. I told her not to fall in love with a bohunk but if she ran across a Standard Oil Magnate to nab him.
Your remarks on the petting and privileges of the oldest one of a family are absolutely true as I can testify from experience. Although the other two back me down that I am always the petted one.
I have been reading David Copperfield and have really found out that I couldn't appreciate Dickens before. I have only read Oliver Twist and Tale of Two Cities. They didn't make much of an impression and I never read anything else. A neighbor sent me Dombey & Son and David C, and I am glad for it has awakened a new interest. It is almost a reconciliation to having my leg broken to contemplate the amount of reading I am going to do this summer. I am getting better fast and I am afraid I'll get well so soon I won't get to read enough. Isn't that an awful thought?
I really don't mind staying in the house on rainy, cloudy days like this but when they are nice like last Sunday I can hardly sit still. I begin to think of corn to plant, gardens to make, grass seed to sow, and a hundred and one things to do, and then I pick up a magazine and forget it. I am not worrying much I guess for they tell me I am getting fat. Then Papa is able to get around now and will soon throw his crutches away and then things will hum.
I guess I won't get rich this year although we did break up a field that hasn't had a crop raised on it since 1873. I was figuring on raising five thousand bushels of corn and at least paying my debts, but as Mr. Micawber says, my creditors will have to wait. I do think that Mr. Micawber is the killingest person I have run across in any book anywhere. He is exactly true to life. I know a half-dozen of him right here in Grandview. They are always waiting for something to turn up or for someone to die and leave them something. I never expect to be rich but if I can't make what I get myself without waiting for someone to leave it to me, I hope somebody will knock me on the head and put me out of danger.
I am sorry Ethel didn't get out Sunday as I'd like to see her as well as get the book. I told Nellie to tell her if she didn't bring it out next Sunday I am going to get in an ambulance and come after it.
I guess you'll have a good time with your bridge club. Speaking of people crying at plays, I don't think there is anything funnier. That is the only way I enjoy a tragedy is to laugh at those who cry. Uncle Harrison says he'd rather go to the Orpheum and laugh all evening than sit and grate the enamel off his false teeth to see Mansfield or Sothern or any other big gun. He is very near right I think. Well I hope you'll consider this worth an answer as I'll be glad to get one. Am hoping to be around in ten days anyway.
Sincerely, Harry