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Description
PF2.2.36
Date
4-27-1839
Transcript
Granville Coll. April 27, 1839
Dear Friend Jerome,
I shall make no apologies for not answering your letter before. but only say that I feel ashamed every time I think about it. I might have written before but did know whether you had returned.
I remained here all vacation, but the last week when I took a tramp to Granville with one of my fellow students, and a pretty severe one it was [?] for [I fell] considerabl[y] like a person who is about tired out when I returned. We went in all about 80 miles on foot, but took a week to it.
From commenced March 21, after a vacation of five weeks rather lonesomely spent, by some. I am studying trigonometry, Cicero De [Oratore], [Aphanis] intellectual philosophy. [a] lesson in Greek Testament — every monday morning at 6 o'clock. I suppose I shall take Rhetoric in a short time. There are a few over a hundred in the institution including all the departments. We are all pretty flourishing and things go on tolerably smoothly.
A company of about 20 went out to day about 6 miles to the “Great Indian Fortifications” near Newar which is indeed a great curiosity. The whole of the traces are very distinct, and the walls from 6 to 12 or 15 feet high. The following is a rough sketch of a part of it.
There is another one nearly a mile from there in a circular form and connected with the rest by embankments, with here and there some thing ext[?] on the inside of the third is a ditch and is about 16 feet from the left of the wall to the hollow of the ditch. And the wall is about 12 feet high from the outside. It is a work which shows much labor and skill in those who built it. Our little mound near Newark wold not bear a comparison to them. The country around there is nearly covered with them.
I expect you had most glorious times New Years at N. I should like very much to have been there. I am glad to hear that the “Worcester Society” is flourishing and occasionally to see a piece of poetry from it. They ought to have a first rate time the first of May, but I should hoe they might not have such bad luck at it as we did two or three years ago.
I should really like to be present at one of their parties, and see some of the “Angel faces” that you spoke of.
I expect William Gallup and Jesse Kingsbury here by the first of June.
I have not heard from Theodore or J. Gibbs since I have been here the last time, but I suppose it is my own fault.
Have you heard form Will Lam or Jo Bradley? It seems pleasant to call up the recollection of old scenes, and old [scoolmates], and [?] how we are now separated, and to picture in imagination what a happy meeting it would be if we could all be brought again together. Old scenes come up to our minds so vividly at times that “In a moment we seem to be there.”
But I hope it will sometime be a reality.
But I am tired and must stop.
Do not delay writing as I did but write immediately to your old friend and classmate. — William Baker.
Give my respects to Charley, Eben. (Rud Hayes) [?] and tell them I should like to hear from them. Excuse the hurry.
To his excellence J. Buckingham
Mr. Jerome Buckingham
Gambier
Knox Cy.
Ohio
William Baker
Granville
(1839)
Recommended Citation
Baker, William, "Letter from William Baker to Jerome Buckingham" (1839). 19th Century Correspondence. 53.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/correspondence_19thc/53