September 25:
Dear Mamma,
...we are having a deuced nice time here...
...
...I like this life...because it is a change & because I am in so much better condition, [with] so little ailments of any kind...
Life in Lowell was not real life to Abbott. It proved nothing to him about being a "man." He had to "spread his wings," "sow his wild oats," that's the obvious, easy stuff that's going on here. He alludes to something else, however: life in Lowell was not healthy. He has "so little ailments" now that he's been a soldier for three months. It seems clear he is referring to his physical condition but wanting to "try myself," last letter, is not a physical desideratum, that's a psychological thing. The war cured(!) Andrew A. Humphreys' mental illness. The guy had had breakdown after breakdown literally all of his life. Not one during the incredible stress of the war. Teddy Roosevelt was a sickly, scrawny, asthamatic child. There is an ill-understood but clear psychiatric component to asthma. Rough riding cured TR. Nervous conditions, even little, purely physical ailments--bad back--are the luxuries of upper-class life. Savages can't afford valium.
Dear Mamma,
...we are having a deuced nice time here...
...
...I like this life...because it is a change & because I am in so much better condition, [with] so little ailments of any kind...
Life in Lowell was not real life to Abbott. It proved nothing to him about being a "man." He had to "spread his wings," "sow his wild oats," that's the obvious, easy stuff that's going on here. He alludes to something else, however: life in Lowell was not healthy. He has "so little ailments" now that he's been a soldier for three months. It seems clear he is referring to his physical condition but wanting to "try myself," last letter, is not a physical desideratum, that's a psychological thing. The war cured(!) Andrew A. Humphreys' mental illness. The guy had had breakdown after breakdown literally all of his life. Not one during the incredible stress of the war. Teddy Roosevelt was a sickly, scrawny, asthamatic child. There is an ill-understood but clear psychiatric component to asthma. Rough riding cured TR. Nervous conditions, even little, purely physical ailments--bad back--are the luxuries of upper-class life. Savages can't afford valium.
