The Inside Story of the Elizabeth Nesbitt Room
Letter

31) Our last slide is to me perhaps the most interesting of all. Elizabeth Keith Botset, a friend and a graduate of Carnegie Library School, belonged to a family in which librarianship was a hereditary profession. The Keith family lived at 6421 Kentucky Avenue in Shadyside. The Keith children were avid readers and one of them, Kate, had fallen in love with Kipling's Jungle Books. The year was 1898 and Kipling was living at Rottingdean, on the south coast of England near Brighton. His eyes were very bad. Mrs. Botset has said, "He took great pains to write this letter for a child." It must have been written using a magnifying glass and a fine-pointed pen. Mrs. Botset's niece, named for the original Kate, gave us the letter, which measures not more than an inch and a half by two inches. It says:

Dear Miss Keith, I can't write a letter as tiny as yours to me<$

but this is the best I can do. I have only just come back from

South Africa where I have seen ostriches & monkeys and all

sorts of things. That is why I did not answer your letter before.

I will see if I can't write some stories that will amuse you some

day & I am glad you like what I have written about Mowgli.

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