out it. I believe I had a little taste of hell
for a while and I don't want to go through it again. Bauer and I are the
best friends you ever saw. He is just the opposite of me. I'm impulsive
and quick and get mad quick and all that. You know all about it, but he
is slow and calm and talks only a little at a time. He is not what you
would call handsome, but he has the most beautiful brown eyes I ever
saw. If I was a girl I would think he was handsome because his eyes are.
He has told me a good deal about his home life and I have told him
something about ours, and he has asked some questions. And, oh yes, he
is coming home with me for the holidays. At first he refused, but when I
told him how much you wanted him to come and how lonesome it would be
for him here he consented to come. I hope you will all like him. Helen
will probably think he is odd and solemn, but I hope she will be kind
and all of us can make him feel at home.

"We are working on the lamp together and it is almost finished. We are
keeping the construction of it a secret because we want to spring it on
Anderson, the foreman. I haven't told you about him. He is all up on
electricity, knows as much about it as Edison, at least he almost says
so at times, and he really does know a lot, but he is the one teacher in
the whole bunch I don't like. There is a manner about him that makes you
feel he has on a dress suit and a stovepipe hat all the time. I heard
the other day he is related to the Van Shaws, a cousin or something of
the steel magnate at Pittsburgh. I have never had any trouble with
Anderson, but I felt relieved the other day to hear that I was not the
only fellow in the school that he ruffled. He is mighty unpopular. Bauer
and I are going to make sure of our lamp first and then give Anderson a
look at it. If the thing goes as well as we expect I don't know how much
there will be in it for us. But if it is anything like what I expect, no
more stewardship for me. I'm tired of waiting on the swells, and since
the Van Shaw episode I've not had a very pleasant time with some of
them. You see, mother, there is a crowd here that seems to think it is
necessary to be coarse and fast in order to be men. The more money they
can spend, the more beer they can drink, the more chorus girls'
photographs they can get to paste up in their rooms, the more tobacco
pipes they can display over and under their mantels, the more slang and
indecency they can learn, the more c