Edward Henry Chase 1905 letter

(For the biography and photos of Edward H. Chase, see the June 21, 2015 post)


Letter from Edward Henry Chase,  Attorney at Law,  Wilkes-Barre, Penna.

February 28, 1905

To his grandson, Hamilton Chase (age 3 ½ yrs)

My dear Hamilton,

Your remembrance of your grandpa’s birthday was very complimentary, and thinking enough of him and for to send a telegram of congratulations all the way from Topeka, and managing to get it here on the birthday shows surprising enterprise and forethought for your years.

If you keep on at this pace, you will come out a regular racehorse of a man when full grown.  You can hardly realize what an impression sending this telegram in your own name on behalf of the family has created here in the Welles Building and River Street.  You really are a wonder and grandpa and you are going to be thicker than brothers.   It beats sitting on the sand to be photographed all to pieces tho its is just what that sitting so composed fully warranted any one to expect.   I wonder what you won’t contrive for my hundredth birthday when you will be some thirty years older.   I just want to live to get that one and show people what a grandson of mine can do when he sets about it.  So you just tell everyone your telegram came through all right, and grandpa and Aunt Fan and Uncle Sam are very proud of you indeed.  Your great aunt Maria Kittridge sent a letter from California, and your Uncle Henry, an electric candle “good for hunting burglars with”  he wrote, and your step aunt Blance Hodge daffodils for your old grandpop, but I prize your telegram best of all.   Tell your Father and Mother and Ethel, and your grandma, and aunties and cousin how well we are in spite of the cold weather, and how glad we are to hear from you, and how glad we would be to take you on a slide down the Mountain from Laurel Run where your Uncle Sam and I went Sunday before last, and to see the big snow drifts hundreds of feet long and all the way higher than our heads, which we were through (_ town name_ ) and Dallas last Sunday.  

With lots of love to you all,   Grandpa Chase