My dearly-beloved Husband -A letter from our much-admired Sara Effie came Saturday. Imagine my surprise at this sentence "We hope to see Nellie Swift often since she is so near at West Springfield". I exclaimed aloud and said "I will write to Nell this very day" but Saturdays and Sundays, I find, go much as Wednesdays and Sundays used to fly at South Hadley and among other things left undone was the letter to you. So here I am before school Monday a.m. with one eye on the school-boys with their "shining morning faces" climbing the stairs to learning's abode, the other on the continually changing group of thirsty ones gathered about the fountain and my mind and heart wholly absorbed in communing with you.
I know it is my own fault that I am thus in ignorance of you & your plans for it is now a month since your letter came. Perhaps I can at least explain my silence without transgressing Marcus Aurelius' rule in regard to apologizing in letters. I wanted to answer that very day your letter came but I thought I would write to you soon anyway and I might better first answer some letters received early in the summer. Auntie came a week before school began and I was relieved of household duties. Lena also came down from Chautauqua where her mother still was and spent the week with me. I had been so quiet all summer that I was quite ready for a tear so we went up the Lake, off for a tramp (my first since the last meeting of the Pedestrian Club) to the theatre twice - oh it was a giddy week for me! Then school began and I have been so busy. We are introducing the study-hall system; our new building is not done so our quarters are inconvenient; thirdly our Principal though an excellent scholar lacks executive ability, hence every night but one we've had a tedious teacher's meeting lasting until supper-time. They're tiresome at best but at the close of a hard day's work and with the knowledge that all the next day's work must be prepared that evening they're wearing. I wonder whether I ever did work so hard before! I hope it will be easier when we have lived through the first month.
I have six classes a day, one in English (an unexpected pleasure!) two in Greek and three in Latin[.]
Tuesday evening.
My flow of thought was interrupted and anyway I guess i've said enough about myself and my work. The point of this lengthy exordium is my grief that through my remissness I have heard something about you from a third person and also my great desire to hear from you immediately all the particulars, what your work is and how you got it and your address (I shall have to send this to Middleboro' to be forwarded) and everything. Of course you're busy but do - yes I'll even beg you to "sit up after the lights go out"! - any thing so that you tell me all about yourself right away.
How I envy your your close proximity to South Hadley! I can see you there some fine Saturday taking a tramp with Abbie and having jolly talks with F. P. & Sarah Effie and here am I five hundred miles away - Rats! Of course I am fortunate and situated unusually pleasantly and yet I sigh to be within easy reach of some of The Family and in the solitude of my own chamber at night I am conscious that the heart-ache for the days that can never return is still there even tho' the cares of the day do smother it somewhat. If there were any prospect of so much as a chance of seeing the girls - any or all - every thing wouldn't seem so irrevocable and gone beyond recall. At any rate, please give me one kindly reminiscent thought when you do go to South Hadley and begin saving your pennies right away to come out here next Summer.
The Round Robins seem to be in a muddle but Elizabeth wrote me some suggestions and I sent them on to Abbie whose clear brain doubtless will straighten the matter all out. So I am endeavoring to await developments patiently.
Don't you hate to feel that Teed & Jenks have gone so far as to really announce their engagement? He isn't good enough for her. But that's always the way. There's no telling what you yourself may be led into doing - after which insult I duck my head to await the merited reproof that you'll surely give. Oh dear why didn't I manage to finish this in the hub-bub at school? There is nothing to distract my attention now and so the longing for dear old 36D is almost too much for me. It won't take much more to make me cry, Professor of Greek & Latin tho' I am!
Miss Smith's letter spoke of the mammoth proportion of 1900 and of the new faculty in too general a way for an outer barbarian like me except that I tumbled that two of them are greatly devoted to Mrs. Mead and that's unfortunate. They'll never get rid of her. I haven't heard from any one else since your letter came except Gertrude who is to study art this winter at home & is thus more reconciled to a winter in Norwich than heretofore. So schicken along any news that you have to
Your loyal tho' separated wife - L. F. B. -
20 West Fourth St.
Jamestown, New York.
September 22, 1896 -