Perhaps quotations from two letters written by Clara to Mildred and
Belle, and received a week later, will form a satisfactory ending
to this chapter. Clara had been taught to read and write in the
public schools of the city, and but little more. In later years
she had occasionally found opportunity to attend some of the night
schools established for those whose only leisure came after the
busy day was over, and so had learned to use her pen with tolerable
correctness. In waiting upon the educated people who frequented the
shop she had caught, with the aptness of an American girl, a very
fair power of expressing herself in speech. Writing a letter,
however, was a formidable affair, in which she had scarcely any
experience. Her missives, therefore, were very simple, and somewhat
defective in outward form, but they suggested some interesting
facts.
"DEAR MILLIE (ran the first): I'm very sad and hapy. The Countrys
like heven. All are so kind. Even the dog dosen't grole at me, and
Mr. Roger says that's queer for he groles at everybody. I feel so
much better, I don't know myself. I feel like takin depe breths
of air all the time and I never tasted such milk. Every glass puts
life in me. If I can get work up here I'll never go back to town and
stand all day again. The girls up here have a chance to live--they
haven't any chance at all in a store. The strongest will brake down
and then they are good for nothing. I wish Belle could do something
else. I wish thousands would go in the country and do work that
would make us look like Susan. Mrs. Atwood thinks she can find
me a place with kind people, where I'll be treted almost like one
of the family. Anyway I've had enough of standing and bad air and
starving and I don't see why working in a farmhouse ain't just as
ladylike as wating on folks with the floorwalker awatchin you like
a slave driver. Standing all day is deth to most girls and about
the hardest deth they can die. I feel as if I could live to be a
hundred up here.
"Millie, dear, I read the Bible you gave me and I pray for you and
Belle every night and morning and He answers. I know it. I love
you very much and I've good reason. Good by. CLARA BUTE."
Her letter to Belle was more descriptive of her daily life, of the
kindness she received on every hand. One brief extract from it will
suffice:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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