HER: Jim has got a box. His mother sent it to him. The other boys
have boxes. We have to have boxes, 'cause they have hash that is made out
of boots. It is not good to eat. The soup tastes like a tooth-pick. The
butter is a thousand years old. A girl said so. If I should have a box, I
think it would be good for me. Put in some cookies and some apples and
cake and cheese and chicken-pie and a neck-tie and apple-pie and
fruit-cake and that other kind of jelly-cake and some cookies and
stockings and cans of fruit and fish-hooks and pop-corn and molasses and
cookies. Jim found a half a dollar in his box, down to the bottom. It was
for his neuraligy. My throat is not quite well yet.

I take drawing. There is a nice lady to teach it. She wears a white sack
with red pockets, and a blue bow. She pulls her hair down over her head.
She says we must draw things, when we look at them. I drew a dog, but it
came out a lamb. I can make a very nice bird. Jim put the feathers on to
the tail.

Mr. Wiseman has got some snakes in some bottles, and a frog and a toad. He
has got some grasshoppers with a pin stuck through them, and a spider and
some potato-bugs. It is the museum. He thinks a great deal of them.

There is a foot-ball, and we play it. It is as big as a pumpkin, but you
kick it. Then you get kicked and knocked down and your leg hurt; but you
don't cry. You never cry except when Jim's asleep in the night, and your
throat aches pretty bad.

There is twenty-four more days on the peace of paper.

Give my love to Tooty. How is the baby?--Your son, D. HARDIN.

* * *
_December 2, 1877._

DEAR MOTHER: It is not a very big town. There is one store where you
treat. It is Jerry's. You walk right in. Jerry has molasses-candy and
pop-corn and pea-nuts and string and oranges and canes and brooms and
raisins and ginger-snaps and apples and fish-hooks and pise. Jim bought a
pie once. It was wet, and you had to bite hard to bite it. He got it for
the lock-jaw. A lock-jaw is a supper, but Mr. Wiseman don't catch us. It
is at night. We had a chicken, but I promised I would not tell where it
came from. I will die before I will tell. All the boys will die before
they will tell. It was the big boys, and they put a blanket up to the
window and made a fire and roasted it. We had some salt and a jack-knife.
John Simms roasted it. He's a big boy. He knows how. He always