'I begin to understand why it is called a _finishing_ school. Don't tell mother, or she will have me put in quarantine when I return. But, really, I'm getting quite thin; the demand made on my system being greater than the supply of 'plain wholesome food.' Now, I'm not going to complain of this 'plain wholesome,' though the butter is sometimes strong, the lamb (?) ditto, (see circular in regard to home comforts.) But I wish you would suggest to mother the propriety of sending me another box; the last we finished in short metre. You know this is a _finishing_ school. Only one of the girls of our hall is too mean to _treat_, and she gets _lots of things_ from home. Yesterday, she brought a beautiful basket of apples to my room, just to show me how nice they _looked_. I suggested that 'the proof of the pudding was in the _eating_.' She was too obtuse to take the hint. It is almost sacrilege to talk so about her; she is Mrs. Smith's _model_ pupil, which, as I before informed you, your humble servant is not. Jenny Dean and I are always getting into trouble. Somehow, we've got a bad name, and our _slightest_ misdemeanor is noticed, so we think that we 'might as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb:' in other words, if the camel's back must be broken, it may as well be by a hundred-pound weight as a feather. 'We have an Italian music-teacher, chiefly noticeable for his length of limb, an exiled nobleman, of course. I hinted to Jenny a doubt as to his nobility. She said, if he didn't belong to 'the Brahmin caste,' he did to the _Bramah cast_, and that was the next thing to it. He has become violently attached to the assistant music-teacher, who is very thin. Now, he has been teaching us to screech 'For Bonnie Annie Laurie.' Jenny persists in calling it, For bony Annie Laurie. The gravity with which he each time corrects her is amusing. Signor _executes_ to the admiration of patrons, etc.; though music on those horrid pianos is rather like music on the rack. Of the six inventoried, (see circular,) two are in the garret, superannuated; two more ought to be; as for the remaining two, on one of them your friend Bessie practices, and it is too great a trial to her nerves to speak of them. You say that you have music in your souls that I must learn to express for you; that you can't turn a tune to save your life; that the attempt is like the attempt to make a curve of straight lines, (you see how I remember all you write or say.) If you were here, you would wish all the melody of the institution _voiceless_, and that it wouldn't ooze out at the finger-ends.