ce. When I have
anything to communicate, I will write again.
'Yours truly, 'Arthur Tracy.'
'P.S.--Take all the furniture in your room and Amy's, and whatever
else is needful for your house. I shall tell Colvin to give you a
thousand dollars, and when you want more let him know, I shall never
forget that you are Amy's mother.
This was Arthur's letter to Mrs. Crawford, while to his brother he
wrote:
'Dear Frank:--I am going to Europe for an indefinite length of time.
Why I go it matters not to you or any one. I go to suit myself, and
I want you to sell out your business at Langley and live at Tracy
Park, where you can see to things as if they were your own. You will
find everything straight and square, for Colvin is honest and
methodical. He knows all about the bonds, and mortgages, and stocks,
so you cannot do better than to retain him in your service,
overseeing matters yourself, of course, and drawing for your salary
what you think right and necessary for your support and for keeping
up the place as it ought to be kept up. I enclose a power of
attorney. When I want money I shall call upon Colvin. I may be gone
for years and perhaps forever.
'I shall never marry, and when I die, what I have will naturally go
to you. We have not been to each other much like brothers for the
past few years, but I do not forget the old home in the mountains
where we were boys together, and played, and quarreled, and slept up
under the roof, where the blankets were hung to keep the snow from
sifting through the rafters upon our bed.
'And, Frank, do you remember the bitter mornings, when the
thermometer was below zero, and we performed our ablutions in the
wood-shed, and the black-eye you gave me once for telling mother
that you had not washed yourself at all, it was so cold? She sent
you from the table, and made you go without your breakfast, and we
had ham and johnny-cake toast that morning, too. That was long ago,
and our lives are different now. There are marble basins, with
silver chains and stoppers, at Tracy Pack, and you can have a hot
bath every day if you like, in a room which would not shame
Caracalla himself. And I know you will like it all, and Dolly, too;
but don't make fools of yourselves. Nothing stamps a person as a
_come-up_ from the scum so soon as airs and ostentation
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