WCP151

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

Nov. 2nd. 1890

My dear Willie

I have sent your fee to the College. I had forgotten all about it.

Your account of yours day’s work (and play) at the College is very interesting. Pray send us another & then another, for each day of the week, as I suppose the work is different on each day. I am glad you are improving in your mechanical drawing — that is an important thing. I suppose like most young people you will not take advice about your poor stomach, but to allow yourself [2] only 10 minutes for breakfast with a tearing walk walk after it, and to eat kidneys for dinner, is trying it very hard, & will result in indigestion which will injure your general health & power of work. Why not try sausages sometimes instead of kidneys, — or steak pudding, or hot boiled beef, or roast mutton, all far more wholesome than perpetual kidneys!

This week has been a bad one for the house — Rain stopped the carpenter & plumber on the roof, & the tiles which had been ordered a fortnight back only came [3] yesterday, — but Charley began tiling at once & worked till dark, & about two days more if fine will finish the back roof as the lead flat & gutters are all done. The cesspool is opened uncovered & we shall have it emptied this week, I hope, and the drains all laid. Mr. Hudson, Mr. Jennings’ foreman Manager who superintended the house when building has been here & explained all about the drains. The rain water & the kitchen sink water, & the overflow from the cesspools all go into a drain which runs out into the station [4] yard and where we saw it and then under Jennings’ road to the harbor, — and a drain from the railway cutting joins it to carry off the water there, (where there is a spring), so it is quite safe. The Our drain was made because the Railway-bridge-bank cut off the natural drainage of our garden, and so, Mr. Hudson said we have a right to drain the water away & the railway know it, so we need say nothing. So that is settled quite satisfactorily. Violet will be going to London after ‘Xmas to as Madame Michaelis is leaving Croydon & going to set up her training College at Notting Hill near a large Kinder Garden.

I enclose a P.Card. Please send it back with the number of the Civil Service Ticket on it as I want to send for something.

Your affectionate Pa | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]