My dear old Nell;-My intention was to give you a good letting alone for you've been so powerful slow in answering all this year, but your second epistle which came yesterday was too much for my offended dignity and write I must to-night, just as other Sunday evenings I used to feel that talk I must.
I've been simply wild with homesickness and longing since the bright days and the robins have come. This talk about about [sic] being absorbed by new interests doesn't work in my case. I am just as uneasy and full of regret for the old days now as I was last Summer. I wish sometimes that I had not vowed "not to let on" to any such feeling. I believe this smiling and still being a villain doesn't pay, but I made up my mind last June not to let any body here know I was pining for College for they are so child College graduation with growing out of touch with things at home. So my letters have been my only refuge and when I hear from you or any of the other old cronies, it seems as though I must drop everything and answer right away. Call it sentiment or what you will, I don't care. I don't believe you'll laugh any way, for I'm sure I can catch such an undercurrent in your letters and even sensible Reddy, who used to laugh at the way the rest of us hoarded the minutes last Spring, confesses to similar feelings.
I feel as though a re-union is absolutely necessary for my physical and mental welfare. Truly I shall never be contented till I've seen for myself how things are at South Hadley and have seen at least some of the girls as they are now that we are all out in the cold, cold world. Naturally then your little letter full of such details as shoes and hats and maps upset me. I say "go" we must. Berkshires, if we possibly can. If that is impracticable, South Hadley and environs. The smallness of the party wouldn't deter me, in some ways it would be all the more fun. If Miss Hooker is beginning to relent, I wouldn't wonder a bit, if she'd go in for the whole tramp, if we'd ask Lottie Bushnell. We could stand one outsider and besides they say she's lots of fun. Reddy is still in for it, nicht nohr? Elizabeth is rather non-committal but I know she hopes to go and her mother thinks it will be good for her and wants her to and that means a great deal for that was how she came to get out here two years ago. Caroline is interested and I hope I can inveigle her into it when she is here in May. Perhaps you can see Mollie when you go through Boston and tackle her. I can't help thinking that something will turn up in the end so that Abbie can go. Get every thing down to as fine a point as possible and let me know. I shall try to get away from here Saturday, but can't possibly a minute sooner, for I am president of our Alumni Ass'n and that doesn't meet until Friday evening.
Not only would we be likely to get fewer together hereafter, but I have a feeling that if we let the first year go by we will never re-une until we have grown so far apart that it will mean nothing but reminiscing and I think too much of all you girls to contemplate losing our old unity of feeling with any degree of equanimity. And if we begin right we might just as well go on. Some can surely get together every year.
If it were not for planning for Caroline's coming in May and for this I should be hopelessly dull. Things have dragged lately and I've wanted a change and some fun. I hope to be more ambitious after the spring vacation which coincides with yours, and marks the half term for we run on the semester plan. I sympathize with you in going from one term right into another. I got completely tired out in January over our exams, and immediate re-organizing, for we had just half a day between the two.
Abbie says some of the girls want to put our money into the Art Building. I can't quite make up my mind to that. Of course it would be awfully nice but someway it seems to me as though when there are so many pressing needs, it would be rather foolish. Tell me what you think? I thought the green & white guest-room fine.
We had a Mary Lyon sermon in the Congregational Church here. We girls went in a body and I felt as creepy as I used to Founder's Day & Baccalaureate Sunday. We raised $115.- mostly from the Halls. Aren't Martha & Snell in luck with their European tour? I wonder if you'll see Jean Grier. She's to visit the College in May.
I had written of Henry's engagement & approaching wedding in the '96 R.R. and that was why I didn't tell you about it for, not calculating upon Alice's vagaries, I thought it would reach you about Holiday-time. I knew the thing would stick if we asked Alice to join - that's mean, but true. He was married March 1. Mamma went to the wedding. I wanted to but when it came to the scratch, I didn't dare ask to get away from school. Mamma had an elegant time, was in Washington two days and Elmira three and five days in Norfolk with Lucie's people. She liked her & her family but they're awfully southern and I'm afraid we might clash. They think it's awful for girls to work & all that sort of thing. She's pretty and they're both awfully gone. You'd be surprised to see how calmly I take it. But as long as he must be away from home, I think it is better for him to have the steadying influence of a wife, and it's lots easier to accept a stranger for a sister-in-law than some one you know and dislike. I've always felt I owed you an apology about Scott's getting married, but I'm only just getting so I can speak of that caper. Last year I just couldn't talk of it, even though I knew it was treating you shabbily to show you that clipping and then go off & mope & never explain or anything. They were a pair of young fools who got married because she doesn't like her step-mother. We don't & can't like her for she's vain & frivolous, and has just spoiled Scott's chances for making much of himself, for he has to grub along to support her.
Henry's ship is to be in New York Easter week to take part in the Grant ceremonies and Lucie is coming up too and they want me to join them, but our vacation comes Holy Week. Isn't that mean?
How like Mary is the slip you enclosed! I straightway went down town & invested in some "foreign correspondence paper" & am now eagerly awaiting the bird. Alice might have sent it on if she couldn't write. I fear I never can have patience enough with Alice & her vagaries.
Methinks we'll have to invest in dark shirt-waists for the Berkshires. Fancy wearing a light one six days steady tramping over those hills! Old sailors would do for hats. We shan't care so much for looks as comfort. I'll have to practice up. I've walked so little this winter that I find three miles more fatiguing than six used to
bobe.Now do be a good girl & write soon. What are you having this Spring? As do you expect to stay where you are another year?
Very lovingly
L. F. B.Sunday evening, March 28, '97
20 West Fourth Street,
Jamestown, New York.