1900 – September 18 – Author unknown (Marion, Va.) to JSA

  • My dear Sir:

I want to beg your pardon for my apparent neglect of a friendship, which I value very highly, in not answering your letter of a now remote date.

I assure you it is from no wavering of that attachment which arrives from our similar and peculiarly sentimental natures (you understand what I mean by sentimental) that have given rise to this delay in answering you; but an innate tendency to do nothing which has characterized my life so far and which I fear will eventually prevent me from becoming famous.

My father has increased my grazing boundary by purchasing the Judge Richardson place – up the creek, you remember, and now I have a better chance of humoring my sentimental nature by raising dogs, a variety of fancy pigeons, etc., and by following the delightful pursuits of a farmer by nailing a plank now and then, by calling the cattle home or running the boys out of the golden orchard.

I am sorry to hear that your business does not allow more sentimentalism, but you may set it down as a fact discovered long ago that too much of this article is worse than none; for I now have in mind a number of young men who, having an abnormal amount of sentiment and not being genii like Washington Irving or Patrick Henry, will never amount to much in life.

I congratulate you sir on having employment that keeps you steadily engaged and I hope to hear of your steady promotion.

I am just through making tax [tickets] and as I have been steadily employed in this work for over a month I will appreciate the liberty I now have, and am contemplating a trip to the mountains. Fount Greever of Chilhowie has invited me to come down [over?] and hunt birds with him and as he claims there are more birds on his place this season than ever I will take him up and go down.

I am very fond of a young pointer that I got recently. Although he is very young and untrained he gives every evidence of making a fine dog. He is very lively and very enthusiastic when at work, so much so that it took him only a few days to kill 14 ducks for us. He is rapidly cleaning up the chickens and to my satisfaction.

Everybody here (excepting the preachers) is getting ready to welcome the big circus – Fewpaws – which is to come here on the eighth. I am looking forward to it with that eagerness that, when a child, I looked forward to Xmas. To see my country brethren from Grayson County and NC parading the streets in their…

[ remaining pages are missing – author unknown ]