Grandview, Mo.
November 22, 1911
Dear Bessie:
Your letter was a very agreeable surprise this morning. I really didn't expect it so soon. I am awful glad you took the notion to be so prompt.
I did miss the chicken and egg special on Sunday night by a very small margin. The girls were up and I stayed fifteen minutes over there. They generally have their clock about half an hour fast. I was going on that and it was only a quarter fast. I was too lazy to consult my own timepiece so I got left. It was just 11:55 when I got to 8th and Wyandotte so I stayed uptown. If I had been right sure I wouldn't be in the way, I'd have tried to meet you. As it was, I went home just thirty minutes after I got up, without any breakfast. So you see how energetic I am.
I am very sorry to hear that Miss Dicie is still not looking her best. I hope her heart will soon mend so she can use it for its real purpose. I wish I had her gift of gab (don't ever tell her I said it that way) for the next few weeks. I'd certainly talk money out of friends and enemies alike. I believe if Mary can get fifty or sixty subscriptions, she can win the car. If I see she is going to come pretty close on the windup, I am going to use a little graft but what she gets it. It would be worth fifty or sixty dollars even if it is only a Ford.
I was assistant wash lady yesterday. You ought to see me in that role. Since our nigger woman busted a beer bottle over her old man's head and ran away, we have had to do our own washing. There are some drawbacks to far life. That is one of them.
We had a four legged visitor to our hen house Monday night. He killed a chicken and then walked into a trap put there for that purpose.
The hired man skinned him for his fur. I wouldn't skin one for forty dollars. This fellow's name is Booney McBroom. You can search George Eliot, Mary Jan Holmes, and Augusta J. before you find a name that sounds as well or fits so nicely. Ethel can give you an excellent description of him.
Please don't let Nellie know you have one of her Sappho pictures. She'll most certainly murder me. I only borrowed that one when she wasn't looking, intending to return it the same way. I forgot it as I might have known I would. It certainly is a good thing my head is securely attached. If I could get it off, I'd forget it somewhere. I'm just scared to death all the time for fear I'll forget to do something I say I'll do. When a person gets to that stage he evidently has college absentmindedness. It is a sign of age they say. Ethel says she took a vase of flowers from her desk and threw the water in the wastebasket and the flowers in the sink. That probably was only concentration on some other subject. Maybe I can say the same about Nellie's picture.
I hope you'll get those pictures done without interruption tonight. Still, I don't blame the boys for coming. I know what I'd do if I lived where I could. Just wait till Mary wins that dinky car. I can do a day's work and then go thirty miles in an evening without inconvenience. I hope you enjoyed the nickel show.
I read My Lady of Doubt on the way home and enjoyed it immensely. Mr. Parrish is a big, fat ugly slob who you'd think ran a saloon instead of a charming love-story factory. His picture was in one of the papers not long ago as a rival of George Barr McCutcheon in the best-seller line. They say that George can write a novel with both hands at once and dictate another to a stenographer.
I have been reading the encyclopaedia (I have to look on the back to see how spell it) to find out how to get the Dominical letter and the Roman indiction to a year. I don't know any more than I did before. Except that it takes a Newton or Archimedes to figure it. It talks of cycles, moons, Julius Caesar until I don't know whether Caesar invented time or not. If a man wants to get his name everlastingly before the public, he ought to monkey with the calendar. Caesar did, so did Augustus and Napoleon and a lot more. Really though, this letter business is very interesting and dates from the year one and before. Every year has one, and leap years two. Next year it is G and F. The letters are used to find out when Easter comes and why.
Are you going to take me to church next Easter? It's a long ways off but you'd as well have a date way ahead. Tell your mother I enjoyed the supper Sunday evening very much, as she could very well see by the way I ate. I wish you'd let me come to see you sometimes on Sunday evening because I can't leave always on Saturday.
You owe me a letter.
Most sincerely, Harry