Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/195

 It isn't easy for a boy even when he's far far away to have to think that his own mother is down on him. And I don't think it's right for a boy when he can earn his own living to stay at home and make just that much extra expense for his father and mother.

I am sitting at the little writing desk in my own room, right here at home, but writing this letter to you makes me feel homesick. So if I'm homesick right here at home, think how it will be when I get to Paris and don't know anybody or the language or anything. I don't like to go away from you and father. It hurts all over. But if I stayed home I'd have to go to the divinity school, and I couldn't stand that.

I don't seem to want to do very bad things, so I don't think you ought to worry about my being in Paris. A man who studied in Paris told me that all the talk about Paris being so wicked is—talk. He says it's just like any other big city, and that you can live the kind of life you want to, and that the good people are admired in Paris just like anywhere else, and bad people are despised.

So good-by, Dearest Mother, and try to forgive me.

This letter flung Mrs. Eaton into a terrible