Letters to his cousin, Mabel

Stanford Univ.,

California.

April 3rd '98.

Dear Mabel:-

I hope you will excuse me for not writing to you before, as I have been very busy. We had vacation last week, but I am never known to do anything like letter writing at such a time.

I enjoyed very much, hearing the way you spent the holidays. You ask about our eating club. The way we had been eating before was not at all pleasant; it

was done in a rush, and there was no sociability at the table at all - sometimes we would eat a whole meal and hardly a word would be said. The person that sat next to us might be congenial or not, just as it happened.

Seven of us four boys and three girls, thought that we could have our own dining-room etc. and have a Chinese cook, and we could live as cheap as we did in the old place, and have what we wanted to eat, and at the same time, have an enjoyable and social time at meals.

Sometimes we have singing when we get through, and almost always one of us reads aloud for fifteen or twenty minutes after dinner. So far it has been very very enjoyable. We can invite our professors and our student friends to dine whith us, while, as it was before, we had no place to take them. In that way we get better acquainted with them.

I received a nice long letter from your mother last Tuesday. I enjoyed it very much. I am sorry for your sake that your

parents are going to Mass, but it does seem as though it would be the best thing for them.

It will be nice to have Thedie and his family in Hoboken.

As I said in the fore part of the letter, that last week we had our Easter vacation. I was off for two days on my wheel. I started out Mon morning and got over to the Coast by night - over a mountain about 32 miles - I went over there to see a wrecked ship, which had been loaded in China and was due in San Francisco. The cargo consisted of tea, fire crackers, palm-leaf fans, etc.

I was told that the ship had such a bad record, that it was almost impossible to get any sailors for her, at any reasonable figure, so that it did not pay to keep her in service. They insured her as heavy as they could, and carefully picked out the place to beach her, so that the men could get off safely.

The cargo was all watersoaked and ruined, and the inhabitants of the surrounding towns were helping themselves to whatever they wished.