LoweLL, March 25, '61
MY GOOD LITTLE BLANCHE: I was glad that your visit to
Washington on the occasion of the Inauguration gave you so much pleasure. The
apples too were very carefully put up that you might feel that father had not
forgotten you. Your letters, neatly written, generally well composed, and
correct in language please me much. The only drawback I have is your persistent
quarrel with the Latin. You say that it will do you no good hereafter. You will
allow, I know, that I am the better judge upon that point; and I assure you if
I did not believe that in after life you would thank me for insisting upon
your further pursuit of the language I would yield to your
wish. Not to enter into a labored argument to prove its usefulness,
will you remember that the Latin is the foundation of
at least five of the modern languages most in use, as a part of
our own language and a most powerful auxilliary to our own – that you
may see how much we are in debt to it I have checked the words (thus)
derived in whole or part from it. You will find your path so strewn
with Latin flowers while you acquire the Spanish or the Italian that you will
remember with pleasure the pain of Sister Augustine's teachings. I am much
obliged to you for your “cards.” If you could fully appreciate a father's pride
in the well doing of a darling child a new incentive would be added to the
conscientious discharge of your duty which you now I believe most fully do.
Do not permit idle gossip of idle people to annoy you. While
you do as well as you now do you can have no cause to fear anything however
malicious. You see, I have written you precisely as if you were a “big girl”
instead of a very little one, but you know I have always treated you more like
a woman than a child, and have appealed to your good sense and judgment rather
than to the childish motives of hope of reward or fear of chiding. I look
forward with almost as much pleasure as you can do to our excursion which we
shall have together in our vacation.
FATHER
SOURCE: Jessie Ames Marshall, Editor, Private and
Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the
Civil War, Volume 1: April 1860 – June 1862, p. 14
No comments:
Post a Comment