To think of my having some of your handwriting for my own!—I was nearly petrified with joy. You see I know your writing from having read Burnett all those “Burn this at once” epistles. And I know it still better from having to catalogue them for his ready reference. You know how impatient he is. (But I have run into an open switch and must digress backwards.) I shall preserve your letter till I die. In war I shall wear it carefully spread all over wherever I may be killed, and in peace I intend to keep my place in my Bible with it. Could words say more! (Being backed up again, I will now begin.) I was not at all surprised at your writing me. If you had known me it would have been different. But where ignorance is bliss any woman but yourself is always liable to pitch in with a pen, and you see you are not yourself but only “any woman” to me as yet. Besides, women have written to me before you. My mother does so regularly. She encloses a postal card and all I have to do is to mail it and there she is answered. It’s a great scheme which I proudly invented when I first went away to school and I recommend it to you if you—if you ever have a mother. How my ink does run away with me! Let me refer to your esteemed favor again! Ah! we have worked down to the bed-rock, or—in Hugh Miller’s colloquial phrasing—to the “old red sandstone,” of the fact that you want Jack. You state the fact with what you designate as brutal candor—and I reply with candied brutality, that I have thought that all along. If you are averse to my view of the matter, you must look out of the window the whole time that I continue, for once entered I always fight to a finish and I cannot retire to my corner on this auspicious occasion without announcing through a trumpet that even if Jack is a most idiotic fellow I never have caught the microbe from him, and, as a sequence, have always seen clear through and out of the other side of the whole situation. Of course I should not say this to any woman but you because it would not have any meaning to her, but, between you and me all things are printed in plain black and white and, therefore, I respectfully submit a program consisting of the two o’clock train Tuesday and myself, to be recognized by a beaming look of burning joy, upon the platform. Beyond that you may confide yourself to waxing waxy in my hands. They are not bad hands to be in as your brother and whatever-you-call-Jack can testify. I will lay my lines in the dark to the end that you may bloom in the sun. Trust me. You need do no more—except buy your ticket. The two o’clock on Tuesday. You can easily remember it by the T’s—if you don’t get mixed with three o’clock on Thursday. Try remembering it by the 2’s. A safe way would be to put it down. Yours to obey, HERBERT KENDRICK MITCHELL.