This is a letter from Patrick Henry Pearse (1879-1916) to Mr. O'Donaher, the father of a pupil of Pearse. In this letter, Pearse tells Mr. O'Danaher that he has enclosed a statement of money owed for the "books and sundries" which Tom, a pupil, has been supplied with since coming to St. Enda's. Pearse writes that he has allowed credit to Mr. O'Danaher for the half-year of violin lessons which Tom did not receive, and that by the end of the school year, Tom will have received a half-year's worth of lessons. Pearse reports that Tom "is very well, and is working satisfactorily". Pearse was a writer, a teacher, and a revolutionary nationalist. A strong critic of the soulless by-rote approach to learning he termed the "murder machine", Pearse was the founder in 1908 of St. Enda's College, a bilingual school for boys with an ethos based around the needs and imaginations of the children themselves. He was a key member of the military council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and was one of the signatories of the proclamation of the Irish republic (largely his own writing), which he read outside the GPO after the outbreak of the Easter Rising. As president of the provisional government, it was Pearse who called the surrender. He was executed on 3 May 1916. The signature on the letter has been cut out and "stolen", as noted by a second hand on the letter. On the reverse side of the letter, a third hand has made semi-illegible notes, one section of these apparently relating to the "progress" of the O'Danaher children, and another mentioning a "commercial institute" and "bookeeping" [sic.]. This side of the letter contains a fraction of a date: October 1919.