TNGenWeb Project/TNGenNet, Inc., (a Tennessee nonprofit public benefit corporation). "The Howard-Smith Collection" Transcription copyright: 1998, by Mrs. F. A. Augsbury; all rights reserved. The originals are at the McClung Library in Knoxville. This file is in text format. Please use your browser's "back" button to return to the previous page. ******************************************************************************* To: R. Spurrier Howard-Smith From: Eleanor (Rand) Howard-Smith, 4400 Chestnut St. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4400 Chestnut St, Aug 20.' 94 My dearest Sperry The envelope I searched for ineffectually has just turned up in my account-book, and I enclose it with the one sample left. You may like to use it before ordering. The morning's mail brings such a bright satisfactory letter from Lida-that I hasten to put that in, too. I felt greatly ashamed last night at your mistaken impression of my precious "home-folks," meaning especially my father and mother-If ever a girl was blessed with the most loving, generous self-sacrificing parents-surely it was I-and I take deepest humiliation to myself for having unconsciously let you form any other impressions. I never had to ask my dear father for anything the second time-the most trifling as well as the most important askings were met with such loving promptness-I hardly dared to ask him for a pencil he was so sure to bring me a dozen. In severe ill-health as far back as I can remember, he toiled for us all not only in the day but in the evening-and when he was too ill to go out, next to dear Mother I was his nurse and the witness of his heroic patience. In exchange for her own lessons sometimes and their earnings at others, he spent lavishly on my education in any direction that he thought me capable of receiving. As for my darling mother, no words of mine can tell you her beautiful unselfishness and consideration. I seem only to wake up in these latest years to a clear sense of their generous kindness. Think of their taking me in to be cared for through some of my confinements-with all the changes of rooms and trouble of nurses-and once they even took us in a party of eight when your father was threatened with nervous prostration-and all this on such a straitened income. Think anything, my darling, rather than that they put hard things on me-I took up gladly my own share and count it my high privilege to have been allowed to help them in any measure. Your very loving Mother