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so the end of another week has come and m letter not set out on its journey yet. I received a good letter from cousin Maria, in which she mentions your having been sick you mentioned feeling ill in yours; Do be careful I have a sort of prevailing feeling of anxiety about you from my conviction that you are too regardless or rather you presume too much or your general good health expose yourself too much or over task your strength. I wish your business would be here, while I stay here. I sometimes feel rather lonely have not got acquainted so as to feel real companionship with any: the family are kind, every thing pleasanter than I expected but no particular congeniality. Mr. H. is quite a story teller a kind hearted man, very pleasant in his family - in respect to his mind there is perhaps a defect, in respect to that faculty which Mr. Clach of Hartford calls the foundation of mental character: viz. the imagination, upon which he gave us a find lecture: he calls it the mission of the mind, reflecting its ideas - the canvass on which its impressions are delineated: he considers essential to a properly cultivated imagination; yet to clear away the fog - to see clearly the picture presented to the mind's eye, - to see it in just proportion the filling up as well as the outline, in other words, a delicate perception - To be able to retain its picture before the mind as long as it is wanted - to see us unreal images: it is the last that seems on some degree attributable to Mr. H. Is there not much truth in this idea of the importance of the imagination? The part of Racine in which we are, is the most elevated & pleasantest, and here the water is good, in the lower portions of the place it is not. As to railroads, there is one in Progress I believe southwest from Chicago, but I hear no talk about it. Plank roads are thought better, uniting the necessities of the country around, which is, as you are aware a great wheat and corn country: it is thought that plank roads better facilitate transportation and trade, on which the prosperity of these lake ports depend, - that railroads would do. they can be built at the cost of 1500. per mile & last ten years, ten miles of one, has been completed west from Chicago, and that yield a profit of 80 per cent to the stock holders.