drunkard's grave, let him do it himself. What has the drunkard ever done
for you, that you should fill his grave for him?

[Illustration: ROUGH ON THE OLD CAT.]

I expect you to do right, as near as possible. You will not do exactly
right all the time, but try to strike a good average. I do not expect you
to let your studies encroach, too much on your polo, but try to unite the
two so that you will not break down under the strain. I should feel sad
and mortified to have you come home a physical wreck. I think one physical
wreck in a family is enough, and I am rapidly getting where I can do the
entire physical wreck business for our neighborhood.

I see by your picture that you have got one of them pleated coats with a
belt around it, and short pants. They make you look as you did when I used
to spank you in years gone by, and I feel the same old desire to do it now
that I did then. Old and feeble as I am, it seems to me as though I could
spank a boy that wears knickerbocker pants buttoned onto a Garabaldy waist
and a pleated jacket. If it wasn't for them cute little camel's hair
whiskers of yours I would not believe that you had grown to be a large,
expensive boy, grown up with thoughts. Some of the thoughts you express in
your letters are far beyond your years. Do you think them yourself, or is
there some boy in the school that thinks all the thoughts for the rest?

Some of your letters are so deep that your mother and I can hardly grapple
with them. One of them, especially, was so full of foreign stuff that you
had got out of a bill of fare, that we will have to wait till you come
home before we can take it in. I can talk a little Chippewa, but that is
all the foreign language I am familiar with. When I was young we had to
get our foreign languages the best we could, so I studied Chippewa without