September the first,
Eighteen Ninety-five.My beloved room-mate;-
It is the time of day when you love to don your blue wrapper while we sit down ostensibly to write letters but really to chatter "you in your corner & I in mine" and someway as I think that in ten days more I shall be speeding toward our much-loved Alma Mater I feel moved to have one of our Sunday confabs in this style. I have on "my white flannel" and am sitting with my feet picturesquely posed as is my wont, while you - well, I wonder what you are doing!
Your letter was shoved under our door one morning by Scott - both "my wandering boys" have returned, I am glad to say - while Elizabeth & I were fooling before getting up. We read it with the usual avidity with which we seized all College correspondence. We had such fun over the two Round Robins that came while she was here but I begin to fear that the other (Mary's) will not get around twice.
You were right in thinking Elizabeth & I would have great fun over Mattie & Miss Hazen[.] They were queerer than we expected even. To our amazement Miss Hazen was downright squelching to Elizabeth. We used to discuss them at great length and always ended pharisaically by rejoicing that we were built on a different plan. We did have just an ideal time; we both enjoyed every minute.
We read quite a little, were on the Lake a great deal and talked morning noon & night a steady streak. The biggest day we put in tho' not any more fun than lots of the others was the day we went to Lake Erie of which we gave an inadequate idea to the Round Robin; the next was our Panama Rocks expedition. They are fourteen miles away across our rolling Chautauqua Hills. It is a queer place; one walks along a grove until suddenly he finds himself on the brink of a precipice and looking down he sees immense boulders of conglomerate rocks piled in wild confusion as if thrown from the brink of the precipice by enraged Titans. So curiously are these rocks heaped that dark cool caverns, long shadowy passes, & gigantic staircases are found, the whole making a most attractive place for such explorers as Elizabeth and I. Across the road a tiny path bordered with solidagoes [goldenrod] & asters leads down down till suddenly you find that you are in the bed of a stream with cañon-like walls rising above you and broad flat stones like those at Pearl City to walk on. Jumping from one to another you come at last to a ruined stone mill beside which you scramble up to the road again. Of course we couldn't return the same way so we drove around to the Bemus Pt. ferry and crossed the Lake in the grayness that comes just before blackness. Then the moon came up & for ten miles we drove along the Lake shore in the calm beauty of an August evening. Will take the same trip when you come.
Elizabeth went late Thursday and as I had not done an identical thing toward getting ready I have been humping since then & expect to keep it up till I am actually en route. I have never been so behind hand before and now there's dentist & dressmaker & calls &c. &c. all in about ten days added to the hub-bub in which we always are with such a house full of people coming & going and to cap the climax Mamma is getting ready to go to the national G.A.R. encampment at Louisville next Saturday. Ho-hum, I wish it were all over & I was at College. I am wild to see you & all the others of our familia clarissima but a cold chill goes down my back when I think that next September we shall all have scattered & things can never be the same. Elizabeth has grown horribly pessimistic & I fear I caught some of it. I can't blame her, though, for (this is sub rosa, please) I don't believe she will be able to stand a single mont's strain and it almost breaks my heart to acknowledge it even to myself. She feels very dubious herself & that is of itself a bad sign. She is pretty strong physically once more but neither nerves nor head are a bit steadier. And yet she felt better while here than for nearly a year. Poor girl, it's pretty tough luck, isn't it?
I expect to reach "quaint South Hadley town" on the nine o'clock stage Wednesday morning. I don't at all mind "making the big beginning," so don't trouble yourself on that score. Elizabeth & Katharine arrive Monday evening, Abbie Tuesday noon & Reddy, I think, Tuesday evening, so we'll all be ready to welcome you when you come Wednesday evening.
You ask for College news, Miss Green hopes to be back but I believe this too is a sub rosa piece of news; Grace Ladd is married & - a bit of news that fairly haunts me - Daisy Stubbs is dead! Quick consumption, they say.
Well, it's most half past five & you probably want to curl your hair so
Auf Wiedersehen
L. F. B.20 West Fourth St.
Jamestown, N.Y.