You will find all papers in their appropriate pigeon-holes, and a small
jar of cucumber pickles down cellar, which were left over and to which you
will be perfectly welcome. The asperities and heart burnings that were the
immediate result of a hot and unusually bitter campaign are now all
buried. Take these pickles and use them as though they were your own. They
are none too good for you. You deserve them. We may differ politically,
but that need not interfere with our warm personal friendship.

You will observe on taking possession of the administration, that the navy
is a little bit weather-beaten and wormy. I would suggest that it be newly
painted in the spring. If it had been my good fortune to receive a
majority of the suffrages of the people for the office which you now hold,
I should have painted the navy red. Still, that need not influence you in
the course which you may see fit to adopt.

There are many affairs of great moment which I have not enumerated in this
brief letter, because I felt some little delicacy and timidity about
appearing to be at all dictatorial or officious about a matter wherein the
public might charge me with interference.

I hope you will receive the foregoing in a friendly spirit, and whatever
your convictions may be upon great questions of national interest, either
foreign or domestic, that you will not undertake to blow out the gas on
retiring, and that you will in other ways realize the fond anticipations
which are now cherished in your behalf by a mighty people whose aggregated
eye is now on to you.

Bill Nye.