SEMINARY, Saturday,
April 21, 1860.
DEAR GENERAL:
Pursuant to your emphatic order (the wit of which has not got through St.
Ange's head yet, which you know is not the clearest of our solons here), I
conveyed it to Major St. Ange, Smith and Boyd — also Dr. Clarke. Mr. Boyd
really has no penchant for such things and preferred to stay, and St. Ange
fearing that if Boyd staid and he went an invidious comparison might be
instituted between them, he was loth to go, but I found that he had a lingering
fear that your emphatic order embraced the payment of twenty-five dollars which
from former experience he knew to be the charge for the ladies' stand. No poor
Major was any more befuddled than he was, and knowing that fifty cents was all
he had in his pocket I lent Smith twenty dollars and told him to offer St. Ange
ten dollars to buy a ticket. Of course I understood that you had provided
tickets at the places named.
Well at last Smith,
St. Ange and Doctor Clarke sallied forth for the races leaving me with the
figuring and Mr. Boyd at his class. The idea of your styling him major, and
being a grave and serious general yourself, he did not doubt your power to
order him to go to the races and to buy a twenty-five dollar ticket. His little
composure was all gone. When at the ferry, it seems Smith met some messenger
from you with a note in a lady's hand writing amounting to a countermand. Smith
returned to the Seminary forthwith – the Doctor got back at 4 p.m. and St. Ange
not till 8 a.m. to-day, driving a new horse in a neat buggy. It seems he
disposed of a little seventy-five dollar tackey and bought horse and buggy for
two hundred fifty dollars. He must have bought on credit for he had no money.
Mills came out at
last. He and I figured on a good house until we got above our money. We then
tried to cut off here and there but at last abandoned it. We then settled on
two plans — either of which can be made handsome and good enough for the money —
and another better house admitting of enlargement in case it should ever become
necessary, substituting in lieu of a wing a temporary frame-kitchen like your
negro quarters. I will try and have three plans for your Board next Saturday,
and as the committee is absent it might be right and proper that the Board
resume the power thus delegated and act themselves. The river is already so
low, that I am of opinion that, in building, this year is lost, and that
if procrastination and delay are necessary here that we had better let the
matter take its natural course, and the buildings be finished when they are
finished. . .
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