My dear Husband:-I hope your mother won't intercept this letter and receive another fright.
I meant to and wanted to write much before this, but I don't have time for anything this Summer that I want to do. Scott has gone to Corning to go into Uncle Tom's store to learn the business & Syd is at Chautauqua so I have errands galore to do, I am continually prancing off some place. Then we have very poor help & a stack of blawsted boarders who are the bane of my existence and I have as much domestic work to do as Abbie did Commencement Week. Hence my vacation so far has been very prosaic, but I kind o' petered out last week and Mamma got a boy to help wait on table and to-day I was gone several hours hunting girls and I mean to keep it up until I find one. Nora Switzer's mother wants me to spend part of this week with her at Chautauqua & Mamma insists that I must go. I am sure to have a good time for Sue & Lena have been there for several weeks. Elizabeth is coming a week from to-morrow and I have all sorts of jolly plans simmering in my head provided she feels pretty well and I get that girl I'm chasing. And even if they don't all materialize I know we'll have a lark together, so that the next time I write I shall have some thing livelier to relate.
I had a lovely letter from Abbie last week telling of her week in Boston, now please tell me of yours. I am dying to hear about it.
I've had two of the Robins & I know that just about two weeks ago Elizabeth sent the third - Mary's - to Edith P- and I shall write to her before many more days about it. She kept Edith's just the same way; Mamma wanted me to go to Chautauqua last Friday to hear Edith P's father but I lack the gumption.
Mirabile dictu! If you continue you'll be as smart as Gertrude & Mary in the dressmaking line. I have a white sailor on which I proudly wear - U.S.S. Minneapolis and have had my cravenette [raincoat] modernized and that is all the attention my wardrobe has received or is likely to receive, judging from the present outlook.
My best regards to all your family, of course including Doctor.
O dear no, I'm not sleeping "lots". I wish I were but I almost always am wide awake at midnight because Mamma won't go to bed & leave a lot of people up and she objects to my going off without her and it's no use to go anyway for I just flop around. She calls me a little after eight usually, then everybody in the house jokes about my late breakfasts. I am glad you are regaining your former plumpness; as for myself I am something like the elephant who ate all night, then ate all day.
Are you reading much? I wish I was more. I've only read six books in the six weeks and that's not much. Now I am reading The Handsome Humes with an occasional bit of Chaucer thrown in.
Mamma wants me, so
Farewell
Lucy.Monday, July 29, 1895.
20 West Fourth St.
Jamestown
New York.