These were filled with irrelevant anecdotes pertaining to my
experience among the Wallencampers, a few desultory descriptions of
character and scenery, with a philosophical digression or two.
To one not intimately acquainted with the epistolary products of my pen,
these letters would have undoubtedly suggested the workings of a crazed
and feverish brain, but they were not calculated to arouse any particular
alarm in the minds of my friends at home, unless, indeed, it was by
reason of the unusual care and painstaking evinced in their chirography
and the punctilious manner in which they were dated. The first one I
dated for the evening on which I was writing. The next for a time several
days in advance of that, and so on, performing this strange act with
utter indifference to the presumption of it.
When it was finished, I seemed to have forgotten what next to do. Grandma
Keeler told me afterwards, that I went to the head of the stairs and
called to her, that she came up, and I told her very gravely that I was
going to be sick, but I knew I was not going to die, and adjured her with
a look in my eyes which she said, "I couldn't go ag'inst, teacher, for it
was more convincin' than health," not to write to my friends of my
sickness, and instructed her how to send the letters which I had sealed,
stamped, directed, and methodically arranged on the table, in their
proper order to the post.
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