Her letters were very like herself . When I sent her the third-rate magazine containing my story -- nothing but a third-rate magazine would take it in its rewritten form -- she wrote to say that she was so glad that I had let the poor girl know . Early in April I received a letter from an aunt of mine in the country , saying that she intended to sell her place and come to the city to live . She asked me to go out to Sweetwater for a few weeks and assist her in the business of settling up the estate and disposing of such things as she did not wish to take with her . When I arrived at Sweetwater I found it moist and chill with the sunny moisture and teasing chill of our Canadian springs . They are long and fickle and reluctant , these springs of ours , but , oh , the unnamable charm of them ! There was something even in the red buds of the maples at Sweetwater and in the long , smoking stretches of hillside fields that sent a thrill through my veins , finer and subtler than any given by old wine . A week after my arrival , when we had got the larger affairs pretty well straightened out , Aunt Mary suggested that I had better overhaul Uncle Alan 's room . `` The things there have never been meddled with since he died , '' she said . `` In particular , there 's an old trunk full of his letters and his papers . It was brought home from California after his death . I 've never examined them . I do n't suppose there is anything of any importance among them . But I 'm not going to carry all that old rubbish to town . So I wish you would look over them and see if there is anything that should be kept . The rest may be burned . '' I felt no particular interest in the task . My Uncle Alan Blair was a mere name to me . He was my mother 's eldest brother and had died years before I was born . I had heard that he had been very clever and that great things had been expected of him .
But I anticipated no pleasure from exploring musty old letters and papers of forty neglected XXXXX .
Alan Blair California Mary Sweetwater smoking springs week weeks years