Woodrow Wilson to Joseph Ruggles Wilson

My thoughts are full of you and dear 'Dode' all the time. Tennessee seems so far away for a chap as hungry as I am for a sight of the two men whom I love. As the Christmas recess approaches I realize, as I have so often before, the pain there is in a season of holiday and rejoicing away from you. As you know, one of the chief things about which I feel most warranted in rejoicing is that I am your son. I realize the benefit of being your son more and more as my talents and experience grow: I recognize the strength growing in me as of the nature of your strength: I become more and more conscious of the hereditary wealth I possess, the capital of principle, of literary force and skill, of capacity for first-hand thought; and I feel daily more and more bent toward creating in my own children that combined respect and tender devotion for their father that you gave your children for you. Oh, how happy I should be, if I could make them think of me as I think of you! You have given me a love that grows, that is stronger in me now that I am a man than it was when I was a boy, and which will be stronger in me when I am an old man than it is now—a love, in brief, that is rooted and grounded in reason, and not in filial instinct merely—in love resting upon abiding foundations of service recognizing you as in a certain very real sense the author of all I have to be grateful for I bless God for my noble, strong, and saintly mother and for my incomparable father. Ask 'Dode' if he does not subscribe? And tell him that I love my brother passionately.

We have had about there months of continuously bad weather here and are proportionately 'under the weather' with various forms and degrees of cold; but fine cold days have come at last and we are one and all getting on our feet again. Will get used to this villanous climate by-and-by, doubtless.—I have been wondering whether the Burney house is snug and dry in winter. I sincerely hope the rigors of the Clarksville weather may not get at you in it.—We are expecting Ellie's cousin, Mary Hoyt, to come up from Bryn Mawr to spend the holidays with us.—Ellie joins me in unbounded love to you both.