I am saved the expense of a new overcoat by Reky’s giving me his old one. It is thin, but I guess will do. Wood is expensive, but I get the cheapest kind, namely perfectly green stuff without any dry. I can’t saw it myself. One stick exhausts me. I can’t saw it thro’ once without stopping to rest several times. Then board has risen to $2.75 a week. I get my room for half a dollar. I shall have to get me a new pair of shoes pretty soon. I have had these resoled once, and the tops mended several times. It won’t pay to resole again. I have had them about a year. That takes $5.00. I have worn my winter underclothing for 4 winters now, and it is worn and ragged. Shall have to renew that. I probably will have to get a new suit by December or January. The ready-made suit I got in New York already looks a year or two old. I do not believe it pays to get ready-made clothing. I have worn this suit now not quite seven weeks. In less than three days it looked worse than my other suit which I had had over five months. To be sure I had travelled in it. But so I had in the other. I will make it last as long as I can. Then Chemistry, which comes in the winter term, is $10.00 extra, on account of waste of chemicals in Laboratory work, breakage, etc. Yet I suppose no one ought to omit Chemistry who can raise the extra money. So you see, Father, it is a sad state of affairs. When I wrote the letters home the other day, I felt exceedingly cheerful. I am just the other way now, for various reasons. Prof. Chamberlain rehearsed me for Monthly Rhetorical to-day. He is Prof, of Elocution, and is excellent. He complimented me quite highly on my delivery of my Senior Prep. Ex. I know he doesn’t like my speaking now. I have lost what little power I had then. I have felt it myself all along, but did not fairly wake up to it till to-day. I feel terribly about it. I was always more interested in those things (not the stage) than anything else, just like Jim, though of course not with his power, and had always hoped some day to study some elocution. But since my voice changed it has all gone. Oh, dear, such is life. Must close.
With much love,
Your Son,
HENRY.
OBERLIN, Tuesday, November, 8. ’81.
DEAR SISTER HELEN,
I take up my pen to write in a mood singularly unfavorable to anything but boring you; the fact is, that some months I am in a chronic state of thinking of things to say to the home folks, while during others I forget all about writing until the last thing, and then find myself without an idea. This is my present condition. Moreover, I can’t get fixed to suit myself. My position in the chair is the epitome of discomfort. I am bending clear down over my paper, cramping my chest and getting a backache, and this state of affairs I seem unable to remedy. Hitch around as I will, the case seems to grow no better, but rather worse, so that I feel somewhat discouraged. At the same time, I don’t want to let the steamer go by without something of a mail. I know how disappointed I feel when my home mail is small, and yet what right have I to expect a large one, when I am unwilling to write myself. This is a good term. Astronomy is a grand study, I think the best that we have met with in our course. I advise you and Carrie to take it up. It is so nice to know the constellations. It is not hard, and is intensely interesting. I am suffering to start for the islands at once, to see how the stars look out there. Astronomy stimulates the imagination. And what study can be more enjoyable than that which takes you out to class in the open air, on a clear, bright night, makes the whole heavens your class-room and the multitudes of stars your teachers. I tell you it is simply immense, and if it wasn’t for the girls pestering around so that you can’t look through the telescope, it would be perfect. However the telescope isn’t any account; you don’t need a telescope to study astronomy; you want to read enough in the text-book to give you an idea of the general nature 01 the heavenly bodies and their motions chiefly, and then you want to go out in the evening and learn the constellations. You see you forget that there are stars to look at, and the chief object of astronomy is to get you to look at the stars. I have learned about a dozen of the constellations, the big and little dippers, Cassiopea’s Chair, Perseus, Andromeda, Pegasus, Draco, Serpentarius, Auriga, the Whale, and the two fishes, besides some of the signs of the Zodiac. I know all the names of the stars in the big dipper, and know the Pole star, which I never knew before. Then every night I take a look at Jupiter and Saturn, and the Pleiades, and I notice the progress of the moon among the stars every night as it travels around us. Oh, I tell you it is fun. I enjoy looking at the Great Cross too, clear up in the sky. That is splendid. I suppose you can see the Southern Cross, which is more splendid yet, I understand. In fact I pine to look at your constellations, at your heavens, in those distant Isles of the Sea.
November II.
You probably have heard about all you care to from me on the subject of astronomy, so that I will start something else. I said this was a fine term. Logic, as well as astronomy, makes it so. The former is a somewhat difficult study, but very valuable and interesting. I think it a fine discipline of the mind. I recommend you to study that as well. The difficulty arises in reciting it well, not in the study of itself, so that you will have no trouble with it. If I were you, I would study regularly three or four hours a day, if you have time. Your hours may be otherwise occupied, of course I know nothing of that. But it is clear to my mind that it is the imperative duty, as well as high privilege, of every person, certainly every young person who has the time, to devote a good portion of that time to study. And I wouldn’t admit that anything else had a right to occupy that time, except unavoidable duties. Not even health, i.e., I think that if the health is good enough to allow a person’s reading good substantial literature, I think it is good enough for some study, unless study be peculiarly trying to the nerves. In my own case, I can say that I find Green’s History of England fully as wearisome to the mind as my studies; in fact, I think generally more so. My lessons never weary me except when they are really hard. A tough, obstinate passage in Latin wearies my mind, and tries my nerves, but I rarely meet with such a passage, and still more rarely allow myself to be troubled by it. (This last I mention to my shame.) Study, if resolutely indulged in, becomes a thorough pleasure, and in no sense burdensome. I have spent as much time, and not much less labor, in reading Gibbon’s “Decline and and Fall of the Roman Empire,” as I expended last spring on the term-work in Greek, when we read the Greek tragedians. And it would be difficult to tell from which I derived the greatest degree of pleasure. But no doubt the Greek has the advantage, in that it has given me the most discipline. Of these two, it would be difficult to say which was the study and which the recreation—such a kindred enjoyment was derived from each. Indeed, study when properly appreciated becomes a pleasure, and pleasure when rightly understood becomes study. I am pleased to observe that my studies give me more enjoyment every day, while my recreations grow more studious. The happy, the perfect man is he whose pleasure and whose profit are the same. I do not think you will perceive that the value of study can well be over estimated. But you will forgive, I hope, all this declamation. It is quite separated from any performances of my own. I am one of those unfortunate beings who are cursed with a clear vision of the right, but who do it not. It makes me feel terribly to think that I am enjoying precious opportunities which the others have not had, and it makes me feel like cutting my throat, to think that those opportunities I am not improving as I ought. I think that no thought on the Judgment Day will be so inconceivably bitter, unless it is the ill-treatment of parents, as the thought of opportunities lost. Both these sins lie on my conscience, so that it would appear as though my goose were cooked. But so we are constructed in this world; a sad jumble of contradictions. However, I think this is a fine world, and it is nobody’s fault but our own that it is not even better than it is, so I am not going to complain. I forgot to say that the Latin this term is rather nice too. We read first some of the “Satires of Juvenal.” And now we have just finished reading selections from Pliny’s Letters. They are pleasant, and very curious reading. The familiar letters of a cultivated Roman of 1800 years ago ought to be interesting, and they are. We have read his letters about the destruction of Pompeii, and the Christians. One letter to a friend relating two or three well authenticated ghost stories, and asking whether he believed in these things at all, was really quite a curiosity. Next term we are going to have the Greek orators. I hope to get great enjoyment out of that. But “we can’t most always sometimes tell,” etc. That feeling Helen, that you speak of, whenever a steamer goes off or a train, I used to have but have got over it. When Will left last night for the long trip across the continent, I told him that I did not envy him the journey. I am pretty well contented. There is nothing