Thursday
May 9, 1867.
My dear Carrie and Abbie,
You see it is really impossible for me to delay answering your
letters, as long as you do inine. I know that I am very impolite but trust
you will pardon, on the strength of our intimate acquaintance. We had a
perfectly glorious time on Founder's Day, though it rained quite hard, by
five o'clock, about three hundred had been deposited at our door, half of
which number were gay young fellows, and really Vassar College never saw
a gayer day. It wasn't uncommon to see one girl with two gentlemen, and
last year the average was twenty girls to one man. Neta wore white alpaca
trimmed with a beautiful shade of green velvet, splendid trail, and looked
very pretty. I had my light silk gored and trimmed with a puffing of
and pink velvet
illusion and a peplin (I can't spell it) made, wore no hoops and had just a
jolly trail.---The Talcotts looked very nicely in drab alpaca, indeed I
never saw Ihem better. Belle Green had white merino trimmed in blue
velvet-- White was all the rage, and the girls looked so well, I wish you
had been here. W e miss you every day but think you could never again be
contented here. Do you remember Ike Van Vliet who played in that organ
concert? W ell he has a twin brother who looks so much like him, that it
is hard to distinguish them. I invited Ike, and Maria Booth asked John, and
such funl for strangers supposed them to be the same person. Prof.
Tenney is just as handsome as ever, and is liked so much by the girls—
In three weeks comes an entertainment by the Philalethean, in five a musical,
in six commencement, and then go home. I can scarcely realize what a short
time is between me and liberty. Oh dear! I do wish you were back. No I
wouldn't object you tu the mercy for they are just now beginning to tuck
on this long lessons. I am in the German A class. Prof. Knapp gives us a
grammar lesson of six pages, and three pages of poetry to translate with
oao learn. In the D. French, Miss Kapp every Friday gives a subject to
one wlxo during the week must write a composition of forty-eight pages, and
then bring it to be corrected before the class. Isn't that awful? What a pity
that Josie B. is away for you must miss him---Lottie Harris has not been
heard from in Po'keepsie by her uncle since September, but I can't believe
that she is dead. Neta is all O.K. again with Ed Smith— Did I tell you?
He is in New Orleans, and writes very often--- Mrs. Van Ingen is enceinte,
so they say, and I guess it is true. He's awfully good to her— Mr. Mitchel
always asks after you—
It's now grub time, and I must go to cracked wheat— Good Eye, and
don't forget—
Fannie.
Franees Elizabeth Brown, spec.
Jan. '66-67
i'o Caroline and Abigail L. Slade, both spec. '65-66.