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"The Howard-Smith Collection"

Transcription copyright: 1998, by Mrs. F. A. Augsbury; all rights reserved.
The originals are at the McClung Library in Knoxville.

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To: R. Spurrier Howard-Smith
From: John Howard-Smith
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My own dear son,
    Shall say "many happy returns"?  That would not half tell the love of a
fathers heart.

    In all that belongs to this life and, the relations of this world you
have been and are to me all & more than a father could reasonably ask.

    But I do so long for something more and higher: My own life on Earth
cannot, in the course of nature be greatly prolonged; and when I come at
the near day to breathe out my life to Him who gave, and then redeemed it
by His own Blood, oh I do crave the assurance that the intercourse suspended
here shall be renewed in nobler, spiritual, eternal scenes where birth days
do not come because "they number not by days and years" there.

    Come then, my dear, dear son.  Walk with me not only as a son, but as
a brother in Christ towards that great life I am nearing day by day.

                                              Your own most loving
                                                Daddy.