[Some paragraph breaks added for ease of reading.]Templeton, Mass.
Oct. 18, 1903.Dear Lucy:-
What is the weather out at South Hadley? It is growing cold here and I "spects" that very soon we shall be all frozen up. Everything is going "swimming" at school. Mr. Abbot has put me out of singing again but I think that I can go back in again all right. Helen went to him and asked if she could go in and he said "All right," but he has put Bessie out. Last year Bessie could stay in and Helen couldn't[.] This year Helen can and Bessie can't. Isn't that rather strange?
Up in Drawing last week we had to draw a branch of sumach and the leaves were all wrinkled up and such a picture as it made. You wouldn't have any idea what they were. Carrie Wright and I thought that we ought to label them. As prepared work we had to draw three different trees, by just drawing the trunk and the branches that you could see and put the rest in by lines like this [five horizontal parallel lines]. You would never in all this world guess what mine was. Ella is to go back to school Monday, provided I get a few last things done and her trunk packed. She can't have anything new to go back with. Isn't it terrible? I washed and ironed all her things yesterday and found that under the arm of her pink sailor waist was a great big hole. Wasn't that awful? I patched it and it has got to go.
I read in the paper that Solon Wilder was playing on the Harvard foot-ball team and Mama said that the Boston papers spoke quite highly of him. Our foot-ball team is having quite a successful season so far. We played with Leomister [sic] yesterday but I don't know how they came out. We have played with Worcester and beat them 6 to 0 but we were beaten with Cushing. Mildred ames is baking a post-graduate course at G.H.S. I saw in the paper that Zoe Walker, Katherine Leamy, Kate Byron, Katherine Glasheen and Mary Leamy were all teaching in the night school. You remember Mr. Hill that used to go with Beulah? He is married & lives in the other part of the Scollay's house. They had piles of goods (it seemed) come and it "passes all my understanding" what they did with them.
Linnie had a letter Friday from Sylvestus Brooks. He is in an electrical school in Brooklyn I think and is intending to go into the navy. It was an awful sweet letter. He supposed that she never thought of him but he often thought of her. He wished that he might be allowed to correspond with her as he would be travelling about and could get little things from different countries which he would like to have her have to remember him by, etc. Wasn't that sweet?
I must tell you of the predicament that Amber got into the other night. We have let the hens out lately and so the back door of the henhouse was open and I suppose he walked in. I didn't know anything about it and shut the door. When I came home from going up after the mail I called him and he didn't come and I went over to the hen house and opened the door and called and he answered. I called again and he answered so I went in and told Auntie and we took a light and came out and there was Kit in the part with the hens and he couldn't get out.
Alice Miles sent me a "dozen of eggs" just think of it! And eggs are awful HIGH now. Well it is a wooden egg about the size of a china egg and inside are eleven eggs, one packed inside the next one. The smallest one is about the size of a common pinhead. It nearly pulls all your finger nails off to get them apart. I presume that you have seen them in boxes instead of eggs. Last night when I opened it I thought that I got down about as small as you would expect them to go but I found three smaller [than] that this morning.
I must stop & go to reading.
With love, X X X X X X
Lucy. X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X X X X X[Evidently Mary signed her sister's name instead of her own by mistake.]