Varieties of Disturbance

We Miss You: A Study of Get-Well Letters from a Class of Fourth-Graders

The following is a study of twenty-seven get-well letters written by a class of fourth-graders to their classmate Stephen, when he was in the hospital recovering from a serious case of osteomyelitis.

The disease set in after a rather mysterious accident involving a car. Young Stephen, according to his own later report and a brief notice in the local newspaper, was returning home by himself at dusk one day in early December. He stepped into the street, preparing to cross, and was hit obliquely by a slow-moving car, not with great force, but with enough force to knock him to the ground. The driver of the car, a man of indeterminate age, stopped and got out to see if the boy was all right. Ascertaining that no great harm had been done, the man drove on. In fact, the boy had hurt his knee but said nothing about the accident at home, out of embarrassment or a perception that he was somehow to blame. The knee, untreated, became infected; the osteomyelitis bacteria entering the wound; the boy became seriously ill and was hospitalized. After some weeks, and worry on the part of his doctors, family, and friends, he recovered, thanks in part to the recently developed drug penicillin, and was discharged.

At the time of Stephen’s hospitalization, his parents put the following notice in the local paper in an attempt to locate the driver of the car. The notice was headlined PARENTS SEEK TO TALK TO DRIVER OF CAR IN ACCIDENT. It read:

About the first week of December, Stephen, son of Mr. and Mrs. B. of 94 N. Rd., at the corner of Elm and Crescent Streets in the late afternoon, was struck very lightly by a car whose driver got out and looked the boy over and discussed it with him. Then each went on his way.

The parents of the boy would like to get in touch with the driver of the vehicle and are appealing to him to communicate with them.

There was no response to the notice.

After the Christmas holidays were over and his classmates returned to school, the children’s teacher, Miss F., assigned them to write Stephen a get-well letter. She then corrected the letters sparingly but precisely and sent them in a packet to Stephen. This was a school exercise clearly intended, if we may judge from the number of consistent features, to teach certain letter-writing skills.

The School

The school in which these letters were written was a large brick building dedicated to use by classes from kindergarten through eighth grade and situated in the heart of a pleasant residential neighborhood. The streets were lined with mature shade trees, and the houses were for the most part roomy and comfortable but unostentatious middle-class homes with modest or, occasionally, generous yards planted with lawns and a variety of trees, shrubs, and flowers. Most of the children lived in the immediate neighborhood of the school and walked to and from school by themselves or with friends on sidewalks that were well maintained but here and there cracked or buckled by the roots of the large trees. Stephen himself, along with his neighbors Carol and Jonathan, lived one street over from the school. At the corner of the street on which the school stood was a small store owned and presided over by a matronly woman with a rather forbidding manner. It sold candy and a limited range of groceries, and was heavily patronized by the children after school. Across from this store, a street descended steeply toward a broad, shallow river in which the children were not allowed to swim because of effluents from the factories upstream. The school building was surrounded by a large asphalt playground lacking climbing or swinging equipment. The classrooms were well lighted, with natural daylight coming in through large windows.

General Appearance and Form of the Letters

The letters are written on lined exercise paper of two different sizes, most of them on the smaller, 7? by 8 ½? four of them on the larger, 8? by 10 ½?. Although the paper is of a low grade and was manufactured nearly sixty years ago, it has remained supple and smooth in texture, and the letters are still clearly legible, some students in particular having borne down heavily to make very dark and distinct lines. They are all written in ink, though the ink varies, some blue and some black, some dark and some light, some lines thin and some thick.

The penmanship is for the most part quite good, i.e., the script slopes at a fairly consistent angle to the right, most letters touch the line, the letters are evenly spaced, the uprights of the letters do not touch the line above, etc., though the variations in thickness of line and formation of letters, as well as the wavering lines, betray the tremulous hands and labored efforts of the novice script-users. Some of the capitals, however, are very elegantly formed, with a handsome flourish.

There are twenty-seven letters altogether, written by thirteen girls and fourteen boys. Twenty-four of the children’s letters are dated January 4, evidently the day on which the teacher set them to work as a group; two are dated January 5, and one January 8, implying that these children were absent on the day the exercise was initiated.

The letters all carry the same heading, obviously prescribed by the teacher, on three lines in the upper-right-hand corner: the name of the school; the town and state; and the date. They are ruled by hand in pencil down the left margin to provide a uniform indented guide for the beginning of each line, with the exception of the January 8 letter — this latecomer evidently was not given the instruction or did not hear it — and those written on the larger sheets of paper, which bear a printed rule down the left margin. The hand-ruled lines vary: some are thin and straight, others thick and slanted, and one trails off at an angle at the bottom, the pupil having evidently reached the end of his ruler before he reached the bottom of the page.

The salutations are all the same: “Dear Stephen.” The closings vary within a narrow range: “Your friend” (5 boys and 10 girls); “Your classmate” (3 girls and 2 boys); “Your pal” (4 boys); “Sincerely yours” (1 boy); “Love” (1 boy); and “Your pal of pals” (1 boy: this was Jonathan, a close friend). It should be noted that only the boys use the colloquial “pal,” whereas nearly twice as many girls as boys use the more formal “friend.”

The teacher has inked in corrections on some of the letters, in the darkest ink and a smaller hand. She has added commas where missing (most frequently after the salutation, “Dear Stephen,” the closing, e.g. “Your friend,” and between the name of the town and the state) and question marks where required. She has corrected some misspellings (“happey,” “sleding,” “throught,” “brouther,” and “We are mississ you very much”). In one case she has, surprisingly, had to correct the spelling of a child’s name, reducing “Arilene” to “Arlene.” She has supplied two missing words. Several errors have escaped her notice. On the whole, the letters are spelled and punctuated correctly; the teacher makes, on average, only about one correction per page, and most of these are punctuation corrections. Either the students have learned their lessons very well or, perhaps more likely, these are fair copies of rough, corrected drafts.

Twenty-two children sign their full names, first and last. One signs “Billy J.” and the remaining four sign only their first names. (For reasons of confidentiality, only the initial letter of the children’s last names will be retained here.)

Length

Excluding the salutation and closing, the letters range in length from three to eight lines and from two to eight sentences. None of the boys’ letters is longer than five sentences, whereas, of the girls, one each has a letter containing six, seven, and eight sentences. Although the girls number one fewer than the boys, they are overall more communicative, contributing 84 lines versus the boys’ 66, and 61 sentences versus the boys’ 53.

Not all of the girls, however, are communicative. Two write letters containing only three lines and three sentences. One is the gloomy letter by Sally quoted below. The second brief letter, by Susan B., includes what may be an envious reference to a box of candy. In general, the length and content of the shortest letters appear to connote depressive or apathetic states of mind in their authors, while the content and length of the longest give the impression of being the products of the more cheerful and outgoing temperaments. Those in the mid-length range variously express stout realism (broken branches and fallen snowmen), bland formulae (see Maureen’s letter below), or strong feelings and personality (Scott’s “I’d yank you out of bed”).

Overall Coherence

There is a tendency toward non-sequiturs in the letters: one sentence often has little to do with the sentence that follows or precedes it (e.g., “The temperature keeps on changing. I can’t wait until you come back to school”).

Some letters, however, develop one idea with perfect cogency throughout: e.g., Sally’s grim letter, Scott’s enthusiastic, somewhat violent letter threatening to “yank” Stephen out of bed, and Alex’s informative letter about sledding, which names the location of the sledding and notes progress from last year: “We had some fun over at Hospital Hill. We went over a big bump and went flying through the air. This year I went on a higher part than I used to.”

Sentence Structures

The letters overall contain a predominance of simple sentences (e.g., “There was a big snowball fight outside”), with now and then a compound, complex, or compound-complex sentence.

Compound Sentences

The shortest letter (two sentences) is written by Peter. He is the same boy whose ruled line is thick, slanted, and bent at the bottom. However, he is also one of the few students to form a compound sentence, and in so doing uses the rarer and more interesting conjunction but: “We are having a very happy time but we miss you.”

Another who uses but is Cynthia, one of the realists in the class: “I have made snowmen but they have fallen down.”

Susan A., another realist, uses but to modify her description of fairyland, as quoted below.

Other conjunctions used in the letters are: until (2), because (2), and the most common and inexpressive or neutral: and (7).

One girl, Carol, using the conjunction because, forms two compound sentences in a letter which is only three sentences long: “I hope you will be back to school very soon because it is lonesome without you” and “New Year’s Eve your [little] Sister slept at our house because your Mother and Father and [older] Sister went to a party.” Because she employs more elaborate sentence structures, her letter is one of those containing the most lines (8) yet the fewest sentences (3).

The most common, and least expressive, conjunction is and (7 occurrences), as in Alex’s sentence: “We went over a big bump and went flying through the air.” One girl, Diane, forms a compound sentence out of two imperatives: “Hurry up and come back.”

Complex Sentences

Aside from the frequent formulaic complex sentences beginning with “I hope” (e.g., “I hope you get better”) and “I wish” (e.g., “I wish you saw it”), there are relatively few instances of complex sentences:

Fred: “Well I guess this is all I have to tell you.”

Theodore: “I beat the boys who were against me.”

Alex: “This year I went on a higher part than I used to.”

Susan B.: “Jonathan A. told me that he send [sic] you a big box of candy.”

Kingsley has two complex sentences in succession: “What do you think you are going to get for Christmas?” and “I got every thing I wanted to get.”

Compound-Complex Sentences

Van, the boy who admits to being uninspired and writes one of the briefest letters, is also, however, one of the few pupils to construct a compound-complex sentence, though he omits two words and contradicts himself (see his use of think): “I think that is all to say [sic] because I just can’t think.”

Jonathan also constructs a compound-complex sentence. His is more cheerful but uses a less expressive conjunction: “I hope you liked my box of candy, and I can hardly wait until you will be home again.”

Susan A. uses the more loaded conjunction but: “When it was over everything looked like a fairyland but some trees were bent and broken.” She follows this sentence with another compound-complex sentence, using the strong conjunction so and including an imperative: “We are very sorry that you are in the hospital, so get well quick.”

Verbs

Some of the children’s verb tenses are unclear.

Apropos a movie, Theodore writes: “I wish you saw it.” It is unclear whether he means “I wish you could see it” or “I wish you had seen it.”

Billy T. writes: “I hope you will eat well.” It is not clear when or where Stephen should eat well.

Joseph A. writes: “I hope you have fun.” It is not clear when or where Stephen should have fun. Both Billy and Joseph probably intended the meaning conveyed by the present participle forms “are eating well” and “are having fun.” It may be noted that Joseph is the only child to associate Stephen’s stay in the hospital with having fun.

The most vivid verb is Scott’s Anglo-Saxon yank.

Imperatives

The only instances of use of the imperative (4, one softened by “Please”) are found in the letters of girls. This may imply a greater inclination to “command” or “boss” on the part of the girls than the boys, but may also be statistically insignificant, given the small number of letters in the sample.

Style

The style of the letters is for the most part informal, i.e., neither excessively formal nor extremely casual or colloquial. Occasionally, the diction becomes conversational: there are two instances of Well as openings of sentences (both omit the comma that should follow). There is a vivid conversational verb, yank, in Scott’s letter. It is worth noting, however, a conspicuous formality common to most of the children on at least one point: given a choice, as they seem to have been, most of the children sign their full names to their letters. Also, in the two instances in which children refer to other children by name, they use the full name, even though Stephen would have known perfectly well from the context which child they were talking about. It may be that in the school setting, first and last names were so commonly used inseparably by the teacher in calling the roll or in reprimanding, that when writing in school, in any case, the children profoundly identified each other and themselves by first and last names both.

Two of the children achieve moments of stylistic eloquence. One, Susan A., creates a vivid concrete image which is enhanced by her use of alliteration and a forceful rhythm: “some trees were bent and broken.” The other, Sally, opens with a powerful specific image—“Your seat is empty”—and then reinforces it with parallel structure: “Your stocking is not finished.”

It could be argued that Scott, too, achieves a certain pleasing balance with his alternation, in the four sentences of his cogent letter, between “over there” and “here where we are,” “up there” and “back here again,” in fact creating a seesaw motion and thereby tying Stephen more closely to the class than any of the other children.

Content

Some of the letters are bland and/or inexpressive, while others are more informative and more colorful, and/or express their writers’ personalities more vividly.

Probably the blandest letter, in that it includes all the most commonly expressed formulaic sentiments and only the most general “news,” with no departures from convention in content or style that would express an individual personality, is Maureen’s. Although it is undeniably friendly and cheerful, the friendliness and cheerfulness seem somewhat rote: “How are you feeling? I miss you very much. I hope that you will be back in school soon. I like school very much. I had a very nice time in the snow.” Her handwriting is round and slants consistently to the right with one notable exception: the word I, which is vertical. It may not be going too far to suggest that these markedly contrasting I’s express a sublimated rebelliousness, a suppressed desire to be less conformist and obedient than she evidently is.

Another fairly bland letter, in a small, round script, is Mary’s, although she is slightly more emphatic than Maureen—“We all miss you very much”—and adds one specific: “I have had lots of fun playing with my sled in the snow.”

The content can be generally summarized as falling under the following headings, within the two more general categories of expressions of sympathy and “news”:

Formulaic Expressions of Sympathy

come back soon/wish you were here (17 occurrences in 27 letters)

how are you/hope you are feeling better (16)

miss you (9)

experience in hospital/food (4)

empathy: I know how it feels (2)

News

playing in snow (9)

Christmas/Christmas presents (7)

school/schoolwork (4)

eating/food (4)

weather (3)

shopping with parent (2)

movies (2) pets (1)

New Year’s Eve (1)

Stephen’s family (1)

party (1)

Formulaic Expressions of Sympathy

Miss You

Many of the children’s letters include the standard “We [or I] miss you” or “We [or I] miss you very much,” often paired with “We [orI] hope you will be back soon.”

Van opens with those two sentiments and then finds himself at a loss: in thin, tremulous handwriting, with so little space between the words that they almost touch, he closes with “I think that is all to say [sic] because I just can’t think.” Some of Van’s letters sit nicely on the line, some float up above it, and some sink below it. It is possible, in his case — as in others in which the child betrays some anxiety — that the letters do not sit on the line because the child is overcompensating: for fear of letting his letters sink below the line, he keeps them up off the line; for fear of letting them float up off the line, he forces them down below it. We must remember, when imagining these children learning to write neat script, that a line is not an actual resting place for a letter. It is a conceptual mark, and a very thin one, and a beginning writer finds it difficult to touch that line exactly with each letter. There is thus a certain amount of anxiety, for some children, even in the act of writing script, regardless of what they are trying to express.

Joan is more specific, and thus more poignant, immediately evoking the classroom: “I miss you in our row in school.” She conveys, in addition, a sense of solidarity among the children in that particular row—“our row.”

Sally is even more specific, and her letter, though one of the briefest, carries the most powerful, and the darkest, emotional burden: “Hope you are feeling better. Your seat is empty. Your stocking is not finished.” This last sentence is followed by a period, but then, ambiguously, by a lower-case b, so that we cannot be sure whether Sally meant to continue the sentence or begin a new one when she goes on to say, again dwelling on darker possibilities: “but I don’t think it will be finished.” The function of the but is also unclear. Sally’s handwriting is faint and thin, and the letters extremely small, except when, as she has evidently mistaken the teacher’s instructions, the tall letters such as f and l extend hesitantly all the way up to touch the line above. The content, along with the brevity of the letter and Sally’s small handwriting, would seem to indicate either an innate pessimism or a low self-esteem, despite the quite exceptional exuberance and panache of her capital H.

How Are You/Hope You Are Feeling Better

Another commonly expressed sentiment is: “We [or I] hope you are feeling well/will feel better soon/will get well soon/how are you feeling?”

Billy J. opens with “I hope you are feeling well,” closes with “I hope you will be back soon,” and adds only one sentence in between: “We are not doing much.” The words “not doing much” are smaller and more compact than the rest, perhaps reflecting the content of the remark. Billy’s letters also tend to sink below the line, according well in spirit with his only news — that not much is being accomplished.

Lois strikes a conversational note that is stylistically unusual among the letters when she writes, in bold black script that sits squarely on the line but sometimes disappears off the right side of the page: “How are you feeling now? Better, I hope.”

Joseph A., instead of writing “How are you?” writes “How do you?” The teacher does not notice this.

Come Back Soon/Wish You Were Here

Lois, who manages eight sentences within the space of her six lines, expresses this sentiment twice, once at the beginning—“When will you be back?”—and once, employing a courteous command, at the end—“Please try to come back soon.”

Carol’s letter, as quoted above, adds the intensifying explanation “because it is lonesome without you”—either quite sincere, since she lives next door to Stephen and may be a close friend, or at least polite. It should be noted that Carol stands in a privileged relationship to Stephen, since their families are also friends, as her letter clearly indicates.

The enthusiastic Joseph goes further, expressing impatience: “I can’t wait until you come back to school.”

Stephen’s friend Jonathan, whose handwriting is well-rounded and upright, each letter sitting firmly on the line, uses almost the same words: “I can hardly wait until you will be home again.” Presumably, Jonathan replaces the more common “back to school” with “home again” because he is not only a good friend but a neighbor.

One girl, Diane, expresses the same sentiment in almost the same words—“I can hardly wait for you to come back to school”—and then reinforces it with a second sentence that employs two imperatives: “Hurry up and come back.”

Her friend Mary K. expresses it more precisely and rather severely, hoping that Stephen “will be back in school in a very short time.”

Billy T. emphasizes Stephen’s discharge from the hospital rather than his return to school. He also devotes two of the three sentences of his brief letter to this idea: “When will you be out? I hope you will be out soon.”

Another boy, Scott, expresses this sentiment in one of the most cogent letters, in which each sentence follows logically from the one preceding. He begins with empathy: “I know how it feels over there,” and then develops his idea, first repeating his expression of empathy (unusual among the letters): “I think you would like to be here where we are.” Now he adds a note of drama, along with a rare use of the subjunctive: “And if I were up there I’d yank you out of bed.” Finally he completes his back-and-forth structure with another reference to the school and the logical—“Then”—result of his imagined action: “Then you could be back here again.” (Scott’s phrases “over there” and “up there” signal his awareness that the hospital is some distance from the town and on an elevated site, a fact supported by Jonathan’s identical use of “up there” and a third child’s reference to “Hospital Hill” in a description of sledding.)

One girl, Susan B., in one of the briefer letters (three lines, three sentences), expresses only the common sentiments and then adds the wistful secondhand report: “Jonathan A. told me that he send [sic] you a big box of candy.” Her handwriting changes noticeably in the latter part of this sentence: dark, upright, and confident at the start of her letter, the words become increasingly faint and slant more and more to the right until the word candy, thin and delicate, is lying almost on its side.

Experience in Hospital/Food

Only a few children express curiosity about Stephen’s experience in the hospital.

Kingsley asks: “Do you like it at the hospital?”

Stephen’s good friend Jonathan, too, is interested: “How is it up there?”

Stephen’s next-door neighbor, Carol, is more specific: “Do you have good meals there?”

Billy T. is also concerned about Stephen’s food, presumably in the hospital, although his use of the future tense makes this somewhat unclear: “I hope you will eat well.”

Arlene, who was evidently not sure how to spell her own name, or perhaps chose to decorate it with the added i, brings a tone of urgency or even peremptoriness to her letter, with her two brief but exact questions: “Who is your nurse? Who is your doctor?” We understand, however, when we come to the last sentence in her letter, that her interest may be “professional”: “I got a nurse kit for Christmas.”

Empathy: I Know How It Feels

Scott opens with a display of empathy—“I know how it feels over there”—before threatening to visit Stephen.

Joseph O. also opens with what seems to be generous empathy: “I know how you feel.” But he then continues with an apparent non-sequitur: “I am going to get a new coat with a hood.”

News

Weather

A few children mention the weather.

Joseph A. says, laconically or reasonably: “The temperature keeps on changing.”

Cynthia, who has a good understanding of the importance of accuracy and detail (see below), writes: “It’s very icey [sic] out today.”

Another girl, Susan A., is more poetical about the weather, deploying the only metaphor in the entire sample of letters. Although the metaphor is a hackneyed one, she immediately afterward improves on it with a more powerful realistic description: “A week ago we had a sleet storm. When it was over everything looked like a fairyland but some trees were bent and broken.” Her ultimately matter-of-fact and realistic approach to her surroundings is reflected in handwriting that is quite regular, except for some tremulous lines in the taller letters.

Eating/Food

Aside from the two mentions of eating in relation to Stephen’s hospital experience, the only mentions of food are the two references to Jonathan’s gift of the box of candy, one by Jonathan himself (“I hope you liked my box of candy”) and the other by the perhaps envious Susan B.

School/Schoolwork

Aside from the commonly expressed wish that Stephen would return to school soon, school and schoolwork are not mentioned by many of the students, perhaps because they are sitting in school as they write.

Diane is the only student to mention a textbook: “We are reading in Singing Wheels.” We may even posit, on the basis of her exceptional interest in this text, along with her subsequent mention of receiving a Victrola for Christmas, implying an interest in music, together with her inconsistent handwriting (letters sometimes slanted and sometimes upright, sometimes sinking below the line, etc.), that Diane is rather intellectually and artistically inclined, and “creative.” At the same time, given her inclusion of her siblings in her letter (see below), as well as her friendship with Mary, and Mary’s mention of their skiing, she appears to be outgoing, sociable, family-oriented, and physically active.

The above-mentioned friend, Mary K., after she describes skiing with Diane, closes her letter: “Well we are starting reading now so I will have to say, ‘Good-by.’” (The teacher, although she inserted the hyphen in “Good-by,” has not supplied the missing comma after “Well.”) Mary is the only one to evoke the classroom at the moment the children are writing, by mentioning an imminent classroom activity. She evidently shares Diane’s interest in, or enjoyment of, the class’s activity of reading.

A third mention of school, but in the most general terms, is the bland remark by Maureen quoted earlier: “I like school very much.” As we observed earlier, however, Maureen may not like school as much as she says she does.

A fourth girl, Lois, mentions another area of study, perhaps one that interests her more than reading: “We are still on tables.” She precedes this, however, by the disclaimer: “We are not doing very much work.” (It should be pointed out that despite the evident care with which the teacher has conducted this exercise, two students comment that they are “not doing much/not doing very much work.” This is either true or, more likely, merely the perception of these particular students, who may, if such is the case, be either brighter and quicker to finish their work than some of the others or simply less interested. Whatever the case, the teacher has allowed these remarks to stand.)

Shopping with Parent

The children go downtown to shop, they shop for winter clothes, and they go with their mothers.

Fred writes: “My Mother and I are going down town to get a stormcoat. My Sister is going to get a new skisuit and a hat.” This is the entire content of the letter, aside from his closing sentence: “Well I guess this is all I have to tell you.” (Again, the teacher has failed to supply the missing comma after “Well.”)

Playing in Snow

The children are generally more expressive about their play in the snow than any other subject, sometimes providing place-names and other details.

Alex writes: “We had some fun over at Hospital Hill. We went over a big bump and went flying through the air. This year I went on a higher part than I used to.” His handwriting, perhaps in keeping with his sense of adventure, is inconsistent, the letters sometimes on the line and sometimes above or below it, the ink laid down sometimes in a thin, elegant stroke, sometimes a thick, awkward one.

Two boys describe fights. John W. writes, “There was a big snowball fight outside. Almost all of the groups were fighting.” Since any snowball fight would necessarily take place outside, his use of “outside” must be local and specific, indicating the school grounds, especially since only there would “almost all of the groups” be present. Stephen was evidently expected to know exactly who constituted “all of the groups.”

Theodore writes: “I had a snowball fight with some boys down at my house. I beat the boys who were against me.”

The realist Cynthia, not as combative as the boys, writes in firm dark ink, “I have been sliding once and I had fun. I have made snowmen but they have fallen down.” The consistent slope of her letters, her sensitive use of parallel structure, and her precision as to the frequency and results of her activities suggest that she may be a good student.

Mary K. is one of only two to mention another child by name: “Last Monday Diane T. and I went skiing. There is a small jump in the hill and we had a hard time jumping it.” Her somewhat stern “I hope you…will be back in school in a very short time,” in addition to the specificity of “small jump” and “hard time” may lead us to posit that she demands a fairly high standard of performance from herself as well as from others.

Janet adds an unexpected element: “I have been sledding and skiing and the cats go with me.” This may be one of the few instances, among the letters, of objectively interesting information. Before signing off, she notes, less interestingly, “They sleep with me, too.”

Lois’s reference to the snow is general, and therefore less interesting, but she is the only one, kindly, to include mention of Stephen in the activity: “Sorry you can’t be with us in the snow.”

Movies

Stephen is also included in Theodore’s report of going to the movies: “A few days ago I went to see Marine Raiders and Stagecoach Kid. I wish you saw it.”

John C. also writes about going to the movies and names not only the movies but the town, though his use of And is unclear: “I went to P. [a nearby town]. And I went to the movies once in P. I saw Branded.” His script is gracefully formed but unusually consistent in sinking down slightly below the line. This may indicate a desire for more stability on his part, a fear of imagination, or, on the contrary, an unusually firmly grounded personality. His mention of the movie, however, may allow us to posit that he is attracted to works of the imagination, but at the same time reacts against their inherently unsettling presentation of an alternate reality by attempting to ground himself more firmly in his own reality.

It is notable that whereas the children are not always specific about other subjects in their letters, they take pains to supply the titles of the movies they have seen.

Christmas/Christmas Presents

Some of the children list their Christmas presents without comment. Others offer a general comment without specifying what they received.

Diane includes her siblings’ presents, too: “I got a victrola for Christmas. My sister got a doll carriage. My brother got a football.” It is unclear whether these were their only presents, or merely the most noteworthy.

John C., on the other hand, appears to be giving a complete list, and displays a nice sense of order in progressing from the greatest to the smallest number in his enumeration: “I got three cowboy books, two games, and a flashlight for Christmas.”

Joan is not specific, but she mentions a sibling and introduces her sentence about Christmas presents with a general statement: “I had a nice Christmas. My brother and I have very nice Christmas presents.”

Jonathan is one of three who ask about Stephen’s presents: “Did you get alot of toys for Christmas?”

Janet is less interested in quantity and wants specifics: “What did you get for Christmas?” She follows up with a second question that could refer to both quality and quantity: “Was Santa good to you?”

Kingsley is the only one to assume, rightly or wrongly, that because Stephen is in the hospital, he has not yet celebrated Christmas: “What do you think you are going to get for Christmas?” In keeping, perhaps, with the tentative nature of his question, the word think rises off the line and then returns to it. He follows this question with a general statement of satisfaction: “I got every thing I wanted to get.” Some of his letters are much larger than others, e.g., the b in better and the C in Christmas—both of which may have been especially significant words for this boy.

Conclusion: The Daily Lives of the Children, Their Awareness of Space and Time, and Their Characters and States of Mind

We may confidently form some idea of the children’s daily lives, characters, and moods from these letters, as well as their perceptions of space and time, even though the letters may to some extent misrepresent the truth because of the circumstances under which they were written: the teacher may have limited their choices as to appropriate subjects, and was surely present at the front of the room overseeing the exercise; the children did not choose to write the letters, but were compelled to write them; they were also aware that they had only a limited amount of time in which to write them and that the next subject loomed (“Well we are starting reading now”).

Daily Lives

If we are to believe most of the information contained in the letters, we may ascertain at least the following about the children: Their possessions are relatively few — in any case, they are satisfied with as few as five fairly modest Christmas presents (see John C.), although quantity is clearly of interest to them (see Jonathan). They spend time with family members and classmates. Their activities include playing in the snow (both sledding and skiing), going to the movies, shopping downtown, and occasionally traveling out of town. Some have pets and strong friendships, and some have an interest in schoolwork. Some of the boys are interested in cowboys, reading, football, and the movies; some of the girls in music, dolls, and nursing. Both boys and girls like to play outdoors.

Time

In general, the children’s sense of time and place is well developed. The letters overall contain a clear sense of the past (e.g., what they got for Christmas), the present (“Your seat is empty”), and the future (“My Sister is going to get a new skisuit”). Some of the children anticipate Stephen’s return in the future. Only Jonathan promises further communication: “I will send you more letters soon.”

The immediate future at the time of the writing is evoked, exceptionally, by Mary K. (“Well we are starting reading now”).

Place

The letters also show that the children have a clear and accurate sense of where they are in space. As they sit in their schoolroom writing, they are in fact on a higher elevation than the center of town, which they not only colloquially but also correctly refer to as “down town.” They are closer to the center of town, however, than is the hospital, which they locate “over there.” Their plateau is also lower than the elevation on which the hospital sits, which they refer to as “up there.” “Up there” may also indicate their awareness of the fact that the hospital lies slightly to the north of the town.

It may also be pertinent to suggest that in the phrase “over there” we see a rare coincidence of actual and psychological space, in that their use of the phrase quite possibly signals an attempt on their part to distance themselves firmly from the hospital and its implied threat of death and disease.

The immediate space of the classroom is evoked by Joan and by Susan B. with their respective references to “in our row” and “Your seat is empty.”

It should be noted, in addition, that some children are more preoccupied generally by the outdoors (“we went skiing”) while some are more concerned with interior spaces (the classroom, row or seat; the hospital). There is also, besides the distancing “over there,” a general, perhaps anxious, identification of the hospital with the direction “out” (Billy T.’s “When will you be out?”) in contrast to the reassuring identification of the school with “in” and “back in” (Mary K.).

Characters and States of Mind

The teacher, though carefully controlling the form and general content of the letters, seems to have allowed the students to follow their own desires as to specific content and style, perhaps within certain limits. This being the case, the children’s choices of subject matter, along with their treatment of it, may give us clues as to their different characters and temperaments.

Some children indicate a high degree of self-sufficiency, entertaining themselves (outdoor play), while others reveal some dependence on “packaged” or “ready-made” entertainment (two instances of trips to the movies). Some reveal more inclination toward activity in general, whether physical or cultural (outdoor play, movies), while others are more concerned with material acquisition (Christmas presents, shopping trips); and finally, a majority of the children focus on outer-directed or interactive activities of one kind or another (play, shopping), while a small percentage seem preoccupied by certain ideas or mental states (you are gone, your seat is empty, “I just can’t think”).

Some show an inclination toward an interactive social world outside the family (“Diane T. and I”), while others are oriented more toward a domestic or familial world (shopping with Mother). Including siblings in accounts of the Christmas holiday (“My sister got a doll carriage. My brother got a football”) may reveal feelings of insecurity and a need to identify with the large family unit.

Some children display boldness (“I’d yank you out of bed”); or a quest for adventure (“This year I went on a higher part than I used to”); while others dwell on absence and lack (“I just can’t think”; and the refrain of “I miss you” and “We miss you”). Some strike a sad note (Carol’s “lonesome”; Sally’s “Your seat is empty”); or hint at a feeling of failure and/or defeat (fallen snowman, bent and broken branches); or of jealousy/envy/deprivation (another child received the box of candy). Some are peremptory in their tone (the girls’ use of the imperative) and some are loving (Janet’s obvious fondness for her pets). Some of the children are more sensitive to difficulty and loneliness than others. But all the children are capable of expressing friendly feelings toward a classmate in an unfortunate situation, at least when they are assigned to do so.

Some of the children display contradictory traits or inner conflict, as noted in the case of Maureen above. Another case is that of Arlene: although she is eminently practical, and seems sincere in her choice of nursing as a profession, she may betray a degree of suppressed romanticism (and thus an attraction toward a less practical vocation) in her highly unusual alteration of her own name from the more down-to-earth “Arlene” to the prettier and more fanciful “Arilene.”

Although the dominant mood expressed by the letters appears to be positive and optimistic, some of the children’s choices of subject matter and style betray a certain fear or uneasiness, or an awareness of the darker side of their lives (snowball fight, difficulty with jump), and this generalized fear may be present in all the children to some extent (e.g., the anxious repetition of “I hope…I hope…”).

In fact, although theirs would appear to have been a relatively safe world — including sledding, Christmas presents, shopping with Mother — it had its darker side: bent and broken branches, fallen snowmen, the empty seat and the unfinished stocking, the box of candy that went to another child. What did they feel as they played on Hospital Hill, with the hospital itself looming over them? Were they aware of Stephen, alone, perhaps looking out at them? Were they perhaps always half conscious that Stephen’s sudden accident might equally well have happened to them? The children were, it should be kept in mind, already deeply familiar with an environment that was confusingly paradoxical and vaguely threatening: the outdoor fun of sledding and skiing could take place only within sight of the grim façade of the hospital above them; their after-school treats could be gained only through an encounter with the hostile proprietor of the corner store, and would then be unwrapped within sight of the steep drop toward the slow-moving but dangerous river. More generally, in fact, one might say that these children, caught between the implicit threat of the hospital on the hill and the more explicit threat of the river down below, may indeed have wished to slip away, as they often enough did, out of reach of both these menaces, toward “down town” with its offerings of tempting merchandise in Mother’s company, or even out of town altogether (a trip to P.), or into the fictional world offered by the movie theaters, the cowboy books, and their own imaginations (“fairyland”).

Addendum

Of interest, for comparison, may be a letter in Stephen’s own handwriting, on an unlined page, written after he returned home, in which he thanks a former teacher for a gift evidently received during his convalescence. His letter is a rough draft, including one misspelling and one usage error, and lacking certain punctuation marks, and may closely resemble the rough drafts of his classmates’ letters, if such existed. It is dated “Feb. 20 1951” and reads: “Dear Miss R., Thank you for the book. I am out of the hospital and I dont have to wear krutchs anymore Love Stephen.”