Letters

Due to the wide appeal of these writings, one can well understand that I receive plenty of responses and thoughts from the readers out there. These two I've included from many I could have chosen. I think they balance each other quite nicely. As an aside, apropos of nothing, the local library was promoting safety, as libraries often do. I think the specific cause they were flogging was how to safely rid your attic of scary bats at Halloween--or how to go down into the root cellar without getting bitten by a spider. It all seemed very nineteenth century. In any case, to the point: The good people at the library spelled safety like this:
SAFTEY. I thought for a fleeting moment that I was in one of those Homer Simpson television cartoons that the car repair duo is always talking about.

Dear Sir,

I am so glad to have before me your incalculably eloquent writings. Scarcely a day passes where I don’t refer to some wisdomly morsel I have plucked from your great bouts of insight. Father says I musn’t read of your tales, that they are monstrous, full of hate and borne of a vile and vindictive nature. He says that they bespeak a weakness both of mind and spirit, that they are the frustrated scribblings of one impoverished in the basic principles of humanity; that I should read instead the pamphlets from Miss Primpson’s finishing school. I love papa of course more than the world, but honestly he can be so impossible at times! It makes me flush crimson! I don’t think you’re impoverished or frustrated at all, at least not very much. Just the other day, when we were with the horses, I spoke of your thoughts on animals and farming in general, and father became nearly apoplectic! He was off in a flash, stirring Blackie to frightful speeds, leaping the far fence (which I have never seen him do before). When he returned, we daren’t speak, for fear of arousing his ire anew. Gladly, mama had corn that evening, which always soothes papa’s sore feelings—and later we all had games in the parlour as usual.

So it is a forbidden pleasure, one that I undertake against father’s wishes—in order to read these things. I will beg of you to be discreet, and if there is at least one redeeming thing that you can include, anything at all (that I can point out to papa), I am sure he would be swayed in his thinking.

Faithfully Yours,

Violette Auberge
Savannah

Another reader is not so kind:

Your suck mister! This is worst off than anything ever Ive never read before.
When don’t you not get out of this, go off out of it. Forver. Sicko don’t go stop stop these weren’t ever. Get a job loser you have to menye cats get a dog your not a man but a sicko loser.

Lawrence Frothmire, III
Jakeysville, Pennsylvania