Vassar College Oct. 7

Dear Will,

I began to
date this letter with a D. and as I could not make it into a V. very well
ended it as you see. It is a very beautiful Sunday morning. Hattie and
Minnie have gone to church and Mattie and I are staying at home. Mattie
is writing to Mother as I am, as you may easily guess, writing to you.
My college work has commenced now hard and strong. The chemistry &
Geology classes were arranged last week. Astronomy is to commence
tomorrow. I am glad to be thoroughly at work. I never read any latin I
liked as well as I do the Satires of Horace. We have read the 1st, 5th, & 9th. The 9th is the best of all you ought to read it.

The hard frosts have begun to open the nuts and bring them down
from the trees. Yesterday Hattie, Mattie, Lilly Bears, a friend of
Minnie's, Minnie & I went nutting. We did not aspire to chesnuts as they
are very scarce this year, but intended to content ourselves with walnuts.
We all wore our gymnastic suits. The grand excellence of these coustumes
shines forth in climbing fences. We had an almost innumerable amount of
those obstacles to overcome & only made as Minnie said 'two steps', of a
fence it would have taken us a quarter of an hour to get over in our ordinary dress.

We did not find the nuts as plenty as we hoped but after rambling about the woods a couple of hours we found we had collected about a peck In all. We then concluded to go over to another piece of woods and in doing so passed by an orchard. There we saw and old man and inquired of him if he could sell us some apples. A more astonished mortal you never saw. He stared at us as if we were wild Indians, at length he came to himself enough to say that the orchard did not belong to him but that he would see: so up he wont to the house and we all followed him in a troupe. The man of the house came to the door and his wife followed him and stuck her head out over his shoulder. They both appeared greatly amazed at our appearance.
After some consultation they said that they had no apples to dispose of but that we might have any that we could get off from the trees. The apples had been gathered but there were a few left here & there. So the old man want back to the orchard and worked valiantly for some time trying to knock down apples for us. There was one beautiful golden pippin way at the top of the great tree that he worked as much as fifteen minutes over and failed to get at last. He collected about half a peck for us and then refused to take anything either for his apples or his trouble.

 You'll think this a rather egotistical letter I am afraid: but I think
about you all the same if I dont write about you. I do want to see you very
much dear; but more than that even - I want you to do right always. How
is Mother? Write us soon, one of your nice letters. You are our chief
dependance in the letter writing line & have done nobly so far.

Your aff sister,
Helen.
When do you expect Charlotte. Give my love to every one and keep a great deal for yourself. Helen