Tougaloo, Apr. 2, 06.
Dear family,
The time between the dates of your last two letters covers quite a period, but I am aware that I have not written every week either. When we get within hailing distance of the end of the term, we seem to get into a frenzy of hurry, and this year it is worse than usual for we have eight weeks less than last to train the young idea. I have thirty-one rehearsals for rhetoricals a week now, and it seems as if they take up all the corners of the day, morning, noon and night.
Last week it rained all the week, but generally the weather and the flowers and the birds make me want to be out doors. I have a new bird book, a little red-leather covered Bird Guide. The other teachers like it so well that eight others have sent for copies also. Now I want some field glasses. Miss Richmond has just sent for a $5 pair. If they are satisfactory I am going to get a pair too. It would be worth that to have a pair for use on the way home, if I go via Mobile and the sea.
I was glad to hear from Mrs. Ball again, and to know that her recent experience had not made her, as one of my Bible class would put it "bashful of the people."
Miss Gordon and I visited night school last Friday, and enjoyed it more than we thought possible. For an illustration of patience I would send anyone to a night school where the pupils have been working all day on the farm or in the laundry. We learned that "rustic" means "liable to rust." Have you purchased my triangle yet? There is a kind of poetic justice in a triangle of land for a Geometry teacher.
And are the lilies coming up?
Bobbie would be interested in the little new colt at the barn, a very fine one they say it is, and in the tiny mule I saw yesterday, all head and ears.
The butterflies are quite plentiful these warm days, but I simply cannot catch them.
Wednesday is my birthday. I am going to celebrate by getting a big chocolate cake from the cooking school, and if there happens to be ice, ice cream, and inviting twelve of my friends. In the cake among other ingredients are to go a dime, a thimble and a ring. I am not going to have S.M.L. 32, put on the top, just because it isn't conventional, you know after you are twenty-five.
With love -
Susie.