Poor Will!

Ima did not write much to Will that summer. In late June he wrote to his father that he had had “one postal card from sister and not a line from the boys.” Poor Will: while Ima and his brothers amused themselves at a New England resort and his father played at being a farmer at Varner, Will was in Austin, living in a rented room above the First National Bank and laboring dutifully at the law firm of Hogg, Robertson & Hogg, two blocks away.

         He worried about his father's health in the summer heat at Varner: "Aside from drinking the artesian water, if you will not let the mosquitoes bite you, and if you will not eat quite so much as customary, I am sure you are as safe there as anywhere. But you must watch out for the mosquitoes; there is but one opinion concerning them as vehicles of malarial infection."

         Will tried to look after his sister, too. He wrote to his father, “I expect sister wants a little more of a stir socially, so I wrote her to inquire for rates where Miss Day [her New York friend] is going and if the charge is not above her limit for board and lodging, she might take the boys up there later in the season. You received the only letter I have had from her. She had a nice time at the Holyoke house party . . . . Writing her yesterday I enclosed some question blanks for her and the boys to fill out for your and my information and I asked her to send some kodak views of the boys so that I might take them with me to you.”

         

(Alas, the questions and the answers, along with the “kodak views” have not been discovered.)

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