“Please ask Julie and Henry if they think that they are big enough to read letters, and if they say yes tell them I will write to them you tell me in your next letter. In your answer let Hubie write as he did in one of your letters. “And now as I have written you a long letter I will stop. Sending love to you all and give them all a kiss for me. “From your aff. Willie. “P. S. Excuse bad writing as I have a sore finger.” The same winter he wrote to his sister; and surely nothing could be more delightfully artless than the patronizing little moral harangue with which the letter begins--a strain which ends in such complacent satisfaction over his own success as a good boy! It must have been mightily encouraging to the little girl. But when he drops into narrative and gives such a vivid account of his skating adventures, one begins to feel the real boy’s heart again: “WASHINGTON, _Feb. 24, 1863_. “DEAR JULIE: “I guess that you are getting to be a great big girl by this time and I hope that you are trying to be a good girl too and that you are trying to correct all your bad habits. I am trying to do it and succeed very well. “I will now tell you about my last skate; we all started at half past nine in the morning and went to a lake warramaug which is 5 miles from Mr. Gunn’s house I walked up there and put on my skates and off I went like a streak of blue greased lightning and the ice was as smooth as glass and a foot thick after I skated about four hours, something happened. did the ice break, No! did my skate break, No! My buckle, NO! the clouds broke and their contents were spilled upon the earth and you had better believe that I got off my skates and put for home with my legs in my boots. It was a snow storm. On going home I summed up how many miles I had been that day and found out that I had gone on my own legs no body else’s you understand, I had that day gone 20 miles. the next day I was sick. I soon got over it and was all right again. “I remain your aff. Brother “Willie. “Give love to all write soon.” Sometime during this same year he wrote in quite a different vein to his mother. He shows a spirit “strenuous” enough to suit the most aggressive, and as tender as strenuous. There are two or three points of school ethics which appear with much force in his account of the trouble: