THREE LETTERS I WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE SOME DAY

Dear Mrs. Mosley:

This is to acknowledge receipt, last week, of your children's book manuscript, "Head Frog of Rustling Brook." All 250 readers here at the publishing house agree that it is utterly charming and the best book we have ever received, or read, for that matter. It portrays fundamental truths in easy-to-understand concepts. We can't find words to express our thanks for your having sent this precious manuscript to us.

Your characters are so believable, wholesome, lovable, and charming and you develop the story with a delightful sense of time and place.

You keep an excellent blend of moods throughout humor, tension, sadness, and best of all, like everyone of us here, anyone who even reads the first paragraph of this book cannot put it down. You must have written your doctoral thesis on plot, for the warp, woof, and colorful yarn of your shuttle keeps one's attention on tiptoe.

You mentioned, offhandedly, that you might be interested in writing a series of books, with the plots centralized around each of the characters mentioned Skunky, Dump Pile Rat, Chuck, Beaver, or some character you haven't even thought of. We would be pleased to offer you, sight unseen, advance royalties of $10,000 for each book.

We would plan a hard cover, a border around each page, profuse colorful illustrations to cement the book's vivid textual interest. Also, we think your name on the cover should be bigger than the title itself.

Anything of the above you that you do not agree with is, of course, subject to negotiation. If you want to sell us first serial rights only, that will be all right with us too as we can readily see that this book and any others along this line would be made into a movie and you would want to retain these rights.

We feel certain that this book would be grabbed by all book clubs that are not mutually exclusive. It is an almost foregone conclusion that this book will be awarded the Newberry, Caldecott and C.S. Lewis Awards.

Please let us hear from you. If you wish to call us, reverse the charges, and if your answer is favorable, we will send an editor to discuss a contract right away.

Sincerely,

The Editors

ABC Publishing Co.

Dear Mrs. Mosley:

Please accept our abject apologies for differing with your mathematical calculations for these many months over your 1987 Income Tax Return. Looking back over your past records, and determining you have never once made the slightest mistake or been late with any payments, we should have been alert to the fact that the problem was ours, not yours. As you kept pointing out to us, the error, or rather non-error, occurred on page three and was a simple error in subtraction on our part. With all our computers, calculators, mechanical abacuses and numbers wizards, you can imagine the degree of stupidity we are feeling. Some have even resigned.

We wish to congratulate you for your unflappable and indefatigable patience with us. We have figured the amount of postage for our corresponding days to be $125. And since you sent the $7.37, which we mistakenly claimed you owed us to, as you said, avoid any penalties we are prone to assess, even though you knew we were wrong, we are herewith returning both items plus 8 percent interest which has been, more or less, the going rate during our period of correspondence.

To apologize in some small measure, we promise that never again will we audit your return. Should you ever wish to come to Washington to work for us, rest assured there is nearly always an opening in governmental bureaucracies.

Sincerely,

IRS Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

Dear Sis:

Didn't we have the greatest fun on our picnic last week. It was such a glorious day, sitting there in the sunshine eating our picnic food. And those hickory nuts! Did you ever think that we would see so many thin-shelled shagbarks at one time. Three trees in a 15-foot circle! When I tell my friends that we could just sit down and pick up two quarts, hulled too, before we had to scoot in any other direction they don't believe me. But I'm not going to tell them where we found them.

I hope you haven't forgotten Grandma's Old Kentucky Hickory Nut cake recipe. In case you have, I'm enclosing it. In recent years I've been calling it Grandma's Old Kentucky Black Walnut Cake, because I didn't have any hickory nuts.

Do you remember how Grandma's cakes always had to be built up with a gob of icing to make it level, since the whole kitchen slanted toward the river.

I'm sorry that you had tooth trouble the minute you got back to Cape. How many do you have left now? Two?

Love,

Lou

P.S. In case you've been missing your diamond ring, I found it in my sack of nuts the other day. Must have slipped off while we were dividing them.