Dear mother, I can hardly find time

[M6]
H.M.A. (Highland Military Academy)
Wednesday

Dear Mother,
I can hardly find time to write to you.  Mustn’t expect and (6) page letters this summer. It is just (8) weeks till I come home.
I wrote a good composition on "Chivalry" today. One of those I tried on and not one of those where I spit some ink on my paper and rub it around with a brush.
Tell the Col. To take lots of physical exercise and no mental. You are a good man pa, only you are one sided. Like this picture in next page. Brains over balances muscle.

         (Sketch of man with head & body separated on a balance. Head weighs more than body.)

You are a nice man and a kind father but you don’t know when who are licked. You would stick by your old desk until some disease had done the "biz" for you.  Do you miss my "gab," on material subjects. Guess if I hadn’t come home you would have died, but my pleasant company and smiling "phiz" kind’er revived your drooping spirits.
I have been trying to diet this week but have eaten enough to kill Goliah. Whats the use of dieting when you are as well as I am.
I am studying real hard now, no fooling. Haint studied so much since I was a boy. I dont waste no more time on that nonsensical Geometry but am progressing "right-bully" in the "Roman gab"
This country looks like the banks of New Foundland. A fog has been hanging over here so that you have to ring a bell or you'l run over some one.
We are having the artillery drill now and it beats the bayonet and saber all hollow. I am "No 2 on the 2nd gun." The feller what puts the ammunition into the bore of the piece. (it is generally a "chaw of tobaccar") We dont fire now but are going to soon.
I am reading "Great Expectations" (Dickens) now and its immense. If he hadn't started off with something bout soldiers I never would have read it.
Don't you forget to send me some postage stamps.

Yours all over
"Younk."