A Happy New Year

for all.

 

"Ranger". Saty evening,

December 31 – 1881.

 

Dear George,

                        I hope you got that picture of the Ranger in the storm. I wish I was with you to spend New Years, or that you were here so I could squeeze you. I hope you are well, and that you will have a peasant New Years.

 

            I wrote about the men having some parrots, perroquetts, pigs, turkeys & chickens. Ask Frank to show you a picture of a perroquette. I think he has them in his book. / they are cunning little things, look exactly like a parrot, only smaller, not as big as your fist. One of the firemen has a pair, and they play together like two children. they go up the ropes together, pull one another up like moneys, & call out when they get separated. There is a big, tall steam pipe that goes up by the side of the smoke pipe for us to blow off steam from the four boilers. Well, one of these little things fell down the pipe yesterday when there was no steam and how to get it out was the question, as there were so many pipes below, and it was about as long as a telegraph pole. Pretty soon the other bird missed this one and began to caw, caw, as loud as it could. I got one of / the men to put a rope down the pipe and left it there for a while, and then one of the men took this bird that was left and put it at top of the pipe. soon as it caw'd a few times we could hear the one down the pipe answer back just a little, but after a minute or so they kept up such a racket back & forth that it seemed as tho' there were forty of them, and all at once the one that was down the pipe had climbed up the rope and when he popped his head up out of the pipe, flapped his wings and screeched out and the other one went / up to him and did the same, it was quite funny. they seemed so pleased, the men all stood by and laughed, and were glad too to see the little thing get out all right.

 

            The parrot that one of the men has on deck talks like everything. Calls out "Strike eight bells", "Corporal of the guard", "Pull away", "Give us a cracker", "Go away", "Shut up", then he laughs just like a man. It goes up one of the ropes sometimes & then calls out, "Oh: help polly down, Oh, Oh", then one of the men helps it down & it laughs again. The men have lots of fun with it.

 

Lots of love for Grandma, Uncle Geo & Aunt Emma, Aunt Ellen, John, Henry, Maude, Mama, Alice & Frank & yourself, from Papa.

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