Name/Title
AU Harris, Joseph Hastings - 1895-04-28 letter to Bertha Elizabeth LambertEntry/Object ID
1990.1.30Context
[Ada, OH, to Miss Bertha Lambert, Bartlett, Ohio, “Washington Co.” on Ohio Normal University stationery.]
Ada, Ohio, April 28, 1895
My Loving Bertha:
Your message found me enjoying life in a high degree and pressing forward as well perhaps as could be expected. I can scarcely wait a moment after getting your letter from the office until every line is perused, for you just seem to send yourself right along in the letter and the more of yourself you put into the sentences the more I enjoy them.
I consider it a great honor to be the one and the only one who is thus privileged to read from your letters your own real personality of love.
That is not selfishness is it? if so then I am quite selfish. I really feel a little sorry for the young men here though who do not get such letters, for they are quite a stimulus to hard work and they bring a ray of sunshine into the dusky room that outranks the brightness of the sun's rays. I was pleased to hear of the organ craze and presume that when I get back home it will hardly seem like Mt. Hermon. I think your suggestion concerning my visit a good one. I should like very much to make a visit home but cannot take the time now that it would require to make a visit there and have any time scarcely with you.
I may have the opportunity of getting home during vacation; so really I would prefer waiting until you get home, when I shall surely not tarry longer, but meet you as soon as possible. You will notice from the Herald that Prof. Lehr has entered the field as a candidate for Gov. of Ohio. He says he will give the school a free ride to the convention which will likely be held at Columbus the first wk. of June. If they don't have school then probably I may go to the convention? I have been thinking that as decoration comes on Thursday that makes a break in the work that we might take advantage of, as that will give you time to get rested and have a good visit with your folks after you get home. That looks like quite a while ahead, but it will soon roll around.
I got a letter this wk. from a bricklayer with whom I worked last summer at West Liberty, W.Va. asking me to come to Caldwell, O. this coming wk. as he has quite a job of brick-work there.
I may wish that I had taken up with his offer, but I just feel determined to stay in school every day possible. I can lay brick perhaps when I cannot go to school. I cannot help thinking that God is interested in this decision. Life is so intense and I have wasted so much of it, that I shudder when I think of it.
I met Mr. Shuey at Oberlin (he used to teach at Otterbein) I questioned him some about the Seminary. He said it requires three yrs. there after completing at W. I have been examining the Y.M.C.A. training schools. They give a three years course, but it only takes two yrs for a college graduate, but they are much more expensive than the Seminary. Mumps and measles are raging here. Leonard went right to Athens to work.
He said he had not time to stop at school. Speaking of school work above I guess you will have time to go through Harvard before I can complete collegiate and Seminary course, but we will talk of this later. Mr. Lanning is troubled with hemorrhage of the lungs. I fear he will not be able to stay in school long. Mr. C. P. Taylor is with us again. My room seems a little lonesome this evening. I wish I might be with you this evening, but as that is impossible, I send the sentiments of a heart gushing with pure love and a [kiss].
Your devoted lover,
J. H. Harris.
