Page 69 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

My Dear Brother,--I am now going to tell you melancholy news. I have got
the ague together with a gumbile. I presume you know that September has

got a lame leg, but he grows better every day and now is very well but
limps a little. We have a new scholar from round hill, his name is Hooper

and we expect another named Penn who I believe also comes from there.
The boys are all very well except Nemaise, who has got another piece of
glass in his leg and is waiting for the doctor to take it out, and Samuel

Storrow is also sick. I am going to have a new suit of blue broadcloth
clothes to wear every day and to play in. Mother tells me I may have any

sort of buttons I choose. I have not done anything to the hut, but if you wish
I will. I am now very happy; but I should be more so if you were there. I
hope you will answer my letter if you do not I shall write you no more

letters, when you write my letters you must direct them all to me and not
write half to mother as generally do. Mother has given me the three

volumes of tales of a grandfather

farewell Yours truly James R. Lowell.

You must excuse me for making so many mistakes. You must keep what I

have told you about my new clothes a secret if you don't I shall not divulge
any more secrets to you. I have got quite a library. The Master has not
taken his rattan out since the vacation. Your little kitten is as well and as

playful as ever and I hope you are to for I am sure I love you as well as
ever. Why is grass like a mouse you cant guess that he he he ho ho ho ha ha

ha hum hum hum.

Young Lowell's life was so very quiet and uneventful that we have very

little account of his boyhood and youth. We know, however, that he was
fond of books and was rather lazy, and did pretty much as he pleased. A

poem which in later years he dedicated to his friend Charles Eliot Norton
gives a very good picture of the life at Elmwood:

The wind is roistering out of doors, My windows shake and my chimney
roars; My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to me, As of old, in their

moody, minor key, And out of the past the hoarse wind blows, As I sit in
my arm-chair and toast my toes.