Montpelier, Vermont.
Sept. 17, 1897.Dear Susie:-
Polly s'poses that Polly finds you make a pretty nice Gwampa.
Thank you so much for the picture. It reposes in one corner of my mirror beside that of Peterkin (good luck to his memory!) and myself. I can see that you are trying hard to look sober.
Your letter was mailed at Springfield. I suppose you carried it with you so far on your journey last Wednesday. I tried to imagine what you would do on reaching So. Hadley, but I really couldn't since things are so different.
Do you room with Elizabeth? I wrote her that if she could use any of my things I wished she would do so. If you don't room with her and she doesn't want my things and you can use any or all will you please do so? How I should like to see your rooms! Does Gertrude room in the same building and with whom? Janet is back, I suppose. I mean to write her soon.
To know about everything will not make me nearly as homesick as not to know much of anything. I can appreciate it all apart from myself.
When you visit the old Manse, please remember me kindly to the inmates including Golden.
These first few days you are not so driven with work, except with room-work, but what you are looking over the grounds & country generally I suppose. Does it seem like an entirely new place?
I must tell you what a bold thing I did last Sunday evening and how it all came out.
The chairman of our C. E. Missionary Com. was absent and at her request I made a few statements about the work in two foreign fields which the Com. recommended to the Society as worthy places to receive the money we had just collected. The two objects were Marshall Islands Training School and a Village school in Marathi Mission, India. The Com. favored the mission in India. I said very little about the Training School, for I couldn't find much about it, but dwelt longer upon the other and put in as an inducement at the last, that very likely we could obtain a letter from a Missionary who had returned this summer from Ahmednager. You know whom I had it mind. It certainly was bold for me to make any such assertion when I had no real foundation for making it. The Society voted to leave it to the Com. The President told the Chairman of the Missionary Com. that all seemed to favor the second object. He did not mention the name and as the second object on the Chairman's list was the other one, the money was sent to Micronesia so I am not going to ask for an Indian letter just yet. We have one Missionary meeting for which to prepare before January and we shall probably study the field where we sent our money.
Thanks for the dissertation on "hired help" I should think you might have had big opportunity to study the characteristics of different nationalities.
Mama has thought she would like to try a Swede girl, but we shall make no change at present and perhaps could not pay as much as a Swede would require.
Please remember me to Grandma & Ezekiel. I wonder where you will sit in church and whether you will have a settled pastor.
Lovingly,
Laura.Your dress must be ever so pretty. Those tucks on the gingham! Alas, that I cannot venerate them!