And, lo, it is finished and you are glad that stupidity and
dullness do sometime come to an abrupt end.
"FRIEND MARJORIE."
* * * * *
"_In the Schoolroom, Jan_. 23, 18--.
"MY BLESSED MOTHER:
"Your last note is in my breast pocket with all the other best things
from you. What would boys do without a breast pocket, I wonder. There is
a feeling of study in the very air, the algebra class are 'up' and doing
finely. The boy in my seat is writing a note to a girl just across from
us, and the next thing he will put it in a book and ask, with an
unconcerned face, 'Mr. Holmes, may I hand my arithmetic to somebody?' And
Mr. Holmes, having been a fifteen-year-old boy himself, will wink at any
previous knowledge of such connivings, and say 'Yes,' as innocently! It
isn't against the rules to do it, for Mr. Holmes, never, for a moment,
supposes such a rule a necessity. But I never do it. Because Marjorie
doesn't come to school. And a pencil is slow for all I want to say to
her. She is my talisman. I am a big, awkward fellow, and she is a zephyr
that is content to blow about me out of sheer good will to all human
kind. But, in school, I write notes to another girl, to my mother. And I
write them when I have nothing to say but that I am well and strong and
happy, content with the present, hopeful for the future, looking forward
to the day when you will see me captain of as fine a ship as ever sailed
the seas. And won't I bring you good things from every country in the
world, just because you are such a blessed mother to
"Your unworthy boy,
"M.
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