Page 65 - LiveOnProjectlori with front cover

The Live-On Project

AUGUST 8, 1933
LA PAIX RODGERS' FORGE
TOWSON, MARYLAND
DEAR PIE:
I feel very strongly about you doing duty. Would you give me a little
more documentation about your reading in French? I am glad you are
happy-- but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery
either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the
printed page, they never really happen to you in life.
All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your
talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are
doubly costly. If there is such a volume in the camp library, will you ask
Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a sonnet of Shakespeare's in which the
line occurs Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds....
I think of you, and always pleasantly, but I am going to take the White
Cat out and beat his bottom hard, six times for every time you are
impertinent. Do you react to that?...
Half-wit, I will conclude. Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship...
Things not to worry about:
Don't worry about popular opinion
Don't worry about dolls
Don't worry about the past

Don't worry about the future
Don't worry about growing up
Don't worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don't worry about triumph

64