Part 7 (1/2)

W P, Saturday Jan 15 {1898}

MY DEAR JULIAN,

I was glad to get your letter and to see you in such high feather I hope you will keep so Watch your health and habits and you ive , especially the cheap vulgar kind, you would spareSoe The latter I dislike as I do the tobacco habit to which it is close akin You had so far escaped the tobacco habit and I had hoped you would escape the slang habit It is not a bitphrases, like ”you're not in it” or ”you're off your trolley” and others, may do in familiar conversation with friends, but ”bunches of cold” or ”cuts no ice” etc, are siain the postal card that I may see ords Ithis --like athin I do not knohen I will coh the winter solstice of her teet away by and by, even if she stays here I read Balzac and enjoyed it The first half isis weak and absurd The old ly drawn, so are most of the characters But we do not pity or sye and fine is that New Paltz girl, but probably like a big apple, she lacks flavour

Your affectionate father, J B

It was very easy to see why Father disliked slang--it was a perversion of his art, and as I have said he had the true pride of the craftsman in his art No one lovedthe that overstepped the bounds and was therefore so truly abhorrent Often I have heard hihted relish of soht in a country hotel Eugene Field I think it ho e recounts it in ”My own Story”

It was a bitter cold night and covers were scanty; and more than that, there were several panes out of theField rued about in the closet and found the hoops of an old hoop skirt, just then going out of fashi+on, and these he hung over the broken , saying ”That will keep out the coarsest of the cold!” ”Coarsest of the cold,” Father would repeat the expression and laugh again I rement of an apt illustration: two fa in a reat was their skill and so swift their blows that the chips literally poured out of the tree as though it had sprung a leak ”That is good,” he said of the phrase and lowered his eyes Once ereupon the Champlain Canal and ere delayed all day by the numbers of slow canal boats Yet some of the lock tenders said business was very slack One of our party coh canal boats as it was, that the canal seeuhed like a child each time Often I complained about the stone house at Riverby, that Father in planning it did not plan to use the winter sunshi+ne; not only were the s not placed right but there were spruce trees in the way ”You write a book on 'Winter Sunshi+ne' and you let none in your house,” I told him and he said that if he had the winter sunshi+ne in his house he e element of fundamental truth, at least in his case

In those days we had ; Father had a curious pair of old skates that he fastened on a pair of shoes so that they would not come off These shoes he tucked, skates and all, under his arress” shoes and slip on the shoes with skates attached and start over the ice, his dog running by his side

Once he rigged up an attempt at a sail with one of his ar left over fro the study, but it would not work People on shore said they thought it was soh the ice One day in the Shataca we had as fine a skate as we ever could ih water and Black Creek had flooded the swa out over the heavily timbered Shataca back to the upland This had then frozen and the water gone out fro froed a little between the trees which gave one a lided over it on skates, as near flying as one could iine at that tie with , and often when I had read a book required I sent the copy on to hi letter he comments upon a book I had sent him, and draws at the same time a picture of days at Slabsides:

Slabsides, Sunday, May 22 {1898}

MY DEAR SON,

The other day when I went ho down to R's to lunch andyou to that 5 cent show in Boston

Heavy thunder showers here Thursday night, cloudy to-day Pretty warreat success It uses rather more than one half cent's worth per hour The Van B's with two Vassar girls were just over here The ”Iceland Fisheret Yann: and what a picture of the life of those fishermen! I did not know that France had such an industry I paddled up Black Creek again on Friday, but saw no ducks There were 35 people here last week Write what you conclude to do about your roo father--J B

Co the life of Father's boyhood with our life here at Riverby in those days and again co that with the life to-day, one cannot but wonder ill be the final outco about everything that he has in life; as civilization becomes more complex we beco that the economists call the ”division of labour” beco how to do but a very few of the things necessary to their existence The early or primitive civilization produced an independent race, and individuals picturesque and unique in character Father noticed this He loved the old-fashi+oned ly individual and picturesque I remember one such character, ”Old blind Jimmy” he was called, ent about the country with a staff, and when Father saw hi, one day ”out home,” he asked me to run with et a picture of old blind Ji I did so, and I knew at once that Jimmy kneas there He must have heard me in some way, and surely must have heard the purr of the focal plane shutter as I took his picture

One day in the e-looking ine a pirate of the Spanish Main would look, and Father was et his picture--it took considerable et hi to us here at Riverby--Mother always ot a sack of flour from ”out home” and she set the cakes to rise; I can hear the sound of the wooden spoon as sheand then set theet the flour all ready tofor butter theht Father always ate theun in cold weather without ”pancakes” And ”out hoot a box of soap and carefully piled it up to dry and harden There was a pail in the cellar for ”soap grease,” into which was put every scrap of fat or grease and saved until the day when the ”soap ht it Those were the days when potatoes were less than fifty cents a bushel, eggs a dollar a hundred, and the very finest roe shad could be had for twenty-five cents And shad nets were knit by hand I can re family, who lived below the hill, knit shad nets all winter Now one can buy the net already knit practically as cheaply as one can buy the twine Sail boats dotted the Hudson--sloops and schooners loitering up and down the river or tacking noisily back and forth I know they used to get becalmed and tide-bound out here and the sailors would come ashore and raid fruit orchards Once some of them stole a sheep and took it out to the schooner The owner of the sheep came after the sailors with a search warrant but the mischievous sailors pulled the anchor chain up taut and tied the sheep to the chain and lowered away until the sheep, which they had butchered, was under water and the search warrant even could not find it

”The little boat” referred to in the letter of July 24, 1893, and on which Father shi+pped his peaches, was a shkeepsie and was more or less of a family institution when the river was open It landed e hailed it, at the dock at the bottom of our vineyard, and Fatheron ”the little boat” Once he went to get his garden seeds and, co back, a violent squall blew his basket with all his purchases overboard I can still reusted and ruffled he appeared over it At another time he was on this little boat when it landed at Hyde Park and a teaon loaded with brick, were standing on the dock They becaan to back, in spite of the efforts of the driver to stop thee of the dock and then when they felt the terrible backward pull of the wagon they sprang ahead in a desperate and vain effort to save the up a shower of splinters, and though they strained every fibre of their bodies, they were drawn over to their death Father was much upset over it It made a vivid impression on him ”But,” he said, ”there was a priest who sat near me and who hardly saw it; he paid nohad happened,” and I feel that all priests suffered on that account in Father's estimation!

One of the cere in of the door ht Mother did this or told ht in for fear of daht, which would wet the mat and shorten its usefulness How different fro nowadays!

Father alore flannel shi+rts, of a dark gray, and these had the unfortunate habit of shrinking about the neck, so in washi+ng them they were stretched and then dried over aon the line with the pail protruding frooing out to the hired man's house to play cards and asked Father to leave the door open for me, which he did It was very late when I returned, half-past nine or ten o'clock, and as I did not want to disturb any one I crept in inFather asked hty sly about it,” he said, half in admiration, half in reproach, when I told hiot to be after ten I got up to come down and see what had become of you and I found you had cos that a ards as is a woives a picture of the life here then and sums up the difference between the point of view of Father and Mother:

Thursday, May 17 {1900}

MY DEAR BOY,

I meant to have written you before this but I have been verywith her house She has gotten down to the kitchen with her cleaning She has hired a woet the house in order for her