e. I hope you will answer my
letter if you do not I shall write you no more letters, when you write
my letters you must direct them all to me and not write half to mother
as generally do. Mother has given me the three volumes of tales of a
grandfather

farewell
Yours truly James R. Lowell.

You must excuse me for making so many mistakes. You must keep what I
have told you about my new clothes a secret if you don't I shall not
divulge any more secrets to you. I have got quite a library. The
Master has not taken his rattan out since the vacation. Your little
kitten is as well and as playful as ever and I hope you are to for I
am sure I love you as well as ever. Why is grass like a mouse you cant
guess that he he he ho ho ho ha ha ha hum hum hum.

Young Lowell's life was so very quiet and uneventful that we have very
little account of his boyhood and youth. We know, however, that he was
fond of books and was rather lazy, and did pretty much as he pleased.
A poem which in later years he dedicated to his friend Charles Eliot
Norton gives a very good picture of the life at Elmwood:

The wind is roistering out of doors,
My windows shake and my chimney roars;
My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to me,
As of old, in their moody, minor key,
And out of the past the hoarse wind blows,
As I sit in my arm-chair and toast my toes.

"Ho! ho! nine-and-forty," they seem to sing,
"We saw you a little toddling thing.
We knew you child and youth and man,
A wonderful fellow to dream and plan,
With a great thing always to come,--who knows?
Well, well! 'tis some comfort to toast one's toes.

"How many times have you sat at gaze
Till the mouldering fire forgot to blaze,
Shaping among the whimsical coals
Fancies and figures and shining goals!
What matters the ashes that cover those?
While hickory lasts you can toast your toes.

"O dream-ship builder! where are they all,
Your grand three-deckers, deep-chested and tall,
That should crush the waves under canvas piles,
And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles?
There's gray in your beard, the years turn foes,
While you muse in your arm-chair and toast your toes."

I sit and dream that I hear, as of yore,
My Elmwood chimneys' deep-throated roar;
If much be gone, there is much remains;
By the embers of loss I count my gains,
You and yours with the best, till the old hope glows
In the fanciful flame as I toast my toes.