Dear Brick and Bill:
I don't know what to tell first.It's all so strange and grand--the people are just people,but the things are wonderful.The people want it to be so;they act,and think according to the things around them.They pride themselves on these things and on being amongst them,and I am trying to learn to do that,too.When I lived in the cove--it seems a long,long time ago--my thoughts were always away from dirt-floors and cook-stoves and cedar logs and wash-pans.But the people in the big world keep their minds tied right up to such things--only the things are finer--they are marble floors and magnificent restaurants and houses on what they call the 'best streets.'At meals,there are all kinds of little spoons and forks,and they think to use a wrong one is something dreadful;that is why I say the forks and spoons seem more important than THEY are,but they want it to be so.
They have certain ways of doing everything,and just certain times for doing them,and if you do a wrong thing at a right time,or a right thing at a wrong time,it shows you are from the West.At first,I couldn't say a word,or turn around,without showing that I was from the West.But although I've been from home only a few days,I'm getting so that nobody can tell that I'm more important than the furniture around me.I'm trying to be just like the one I'm with,and I don't believe an outsider can tell that I have any more sense than the rest of them.
Miss Sellimer is so nice to me.I told her right at the start that I didn't know anything about the big world,and she teaches me everything.I'd be more comfortable if she could forget about my saving her life,but she never can,and is so grateful it makes me feel that I'm enjoying all this on false pretenses for you know my finding her was only an accident.Her mother is very pleasant to me--much more so than to her.Bill,you know how you speak to your horse,sometimes,when it acts contrary?That's the way Miss Sellimer speaks to her mother,at times.However,they don't seem very well acquainted with each other.Of course if they'd lived together in a cove for years,they'd have learned to tell each other their thoughts and plans,but out in the big world there isn't time for anything except to dress and go.
I'm learning to dress.I used to think a girl could do that to please herself,but no,the dresses are a thousand times more important than the people inside them.It wouldn't matter how wise you are if your dress is wrong,nor would it matter how foolish,if your dress is like everybody else's.A person could be independent and do as she pleased,but she wouldn't be in society.And nobody would believe she was independent,they would just think she didn't know any better,or was poor.Because,they don't know anything about being independent;they want to be governed by their things.A poor person isn't cut off from society because he hasn't money,but because he doesn't know how to deal with high things,not having practised amongst them.It isn't because society people have lots of money that they stick together,but because all of them know what to do with the little forks and spoons.
It is like the dearest,jolliest kind of game to me,to be with these people,and say just what they say,and like what they like,and act as they act--and that's the difference between me and them;it's not a game to them,it's deadly earnest.They think they're LIVING!
Do you think I could play at this so long that one day I'd imagine I was doing what God had expected of me when he sent me to you,Brick?Could I stay out in the big world until I'd think of the cove as a cramped little pocket in the wilderness with two pennies jingling at the bottom of it named Brick and Bill?If I thought there was any danger of that,I'd start home in the morning!
We are in a Kansas City hotel where all the feathers are in ladies'hats and bonnets instead of in the gentlemen's hair.To get to our rooms you go to a dark little door and push something that makes a bell ring,and then you step into a dugout on pulleys,that shoots up in the air so quick it makes you feel a part of you has fallen out and got lost.The dugout doesn't slow up for the third story,it just stops THAT QUICK--they call it an 'elevator'and it certainly does elevate!You step out in a dim trail where there are dusky kinds of lights,although it may be the middle of the day,and you follow the trail over a narrow yellow desert,turn to your right and keep going till you reach a door with your number on it.When you are in your room,you see the things that are considered more important than the people.
There's an entire room set apart for the sole purpose of bathing!--and the room with the bed in it is separate from the sitting-room.You can go in one and stay a while,and go in another and stay a while,and then go in the third--and you have a different feeling for each room that you're in.I'd rather see everything at once,as I can in my cabin.And that bed!If my little bed at home could be brought here and set up beside this hotel wonder,the very walls would cry out....I wish I could sleep in my little bed tonight,and hear the wind howling over the mountain.
