In a letter to his mother, informing her of the change, he had
said:
Of course, I appreciate the fact that you are paying the bills,
old dear, and out of consideration for you I dare say I ought to
stick it out with the Vicks till November as we arranged. But I
simply cannot stand it any longer. The old woman almost puts me to
bed, the girl almost sits on my lap, the boy drives me crazy with
his infernal questions about the war, and old man Brown,--the one
who went to school with father out in this gosh awful land of the
grasshopper,--he is the limit. He never lets a day go by without
some slur about my grandfather or some other member of the family
who existed long before I was born. Thinks he's witty. He is always
nagging at me about cigarette smoking. I wish you could see the
way he mishandles a cigar. As you know, I seldom smoke more than a
half dozen cigarettes a day, but he swears to God I am everlastingly
ruining my health, and it has got on my nerves so that if I stay
on here another week I'll call the old jay so hard he'll drop dead
from the shock. And, my heavens, how lonesome it is here. I almost
die of homesickness. I just had to find a place where there is
some one to talk to besides the cows and sheep and people who never
think of anything but crops and the weather, last Sunday's sermon
and Theodore Roosevelt. They are honest, but, my God, how could
they be anything else? It would not be right for me to deny that
I have improved a great deal in the last couple of weeks.
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