Dear Cal,

With this photo please receive my heartfelt wishes for a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year. Your own photo and food wishes reached me this morning, and the photo was a particularly agreeable surprise. I have thought many times I should like to have your likeness and now that wish has been satisfied. I am very glad indeed that you are able to spend your Christmas at home, but regret very much that I shall not be in town to see you. I wish your mother and the rest could spare you long enough in the short visit you are to make to permit of your taking a train to Toronto an hour or so earlier (if there is one), than you would, in the ordinary course of events take, so that I might have a chance for a chat with you.

My reason for desiring particularly to see you this time is that my own plans for the future make it probable that as both of us shall be busy the year round, as we shall be some distance apart and I do not know when I shall be in this part of the world again for some time to come, few opportunities will be given us of seeing each other even once a year.

I should like to hear, too how you are getting on in Montreal and have some very interesting news of myself to pour into your ears if you can tear yourself away from home long enough to hear it. Of course Cal, I do not expect you to spoil your visit at home or to forgo any plans to come away a little earlier to see me. Possibly there is no train to Toronto for several hours before your proper starting time, in which case you will consider my request unasked. But if you can get away a little earlier without dislocating your plans too much I'd be very pleased indeed to see you.

Ever your friend,

John M. Rioch.

P.S. My address in Toronto will be 12 Beaconsfield Ave. If you can see me please drop a line and I shall meet you at the station. Please excuse the blots. It's an old trick of mine to sprinkle my letters with a plentiful supply of superfluous ink particularly when as now I'm [?].