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and my health & strength seem very rapidly improving. My appetite has become is becoming almost enormous, and I am gaining in weight, -- "fatting up," quite perceptibly. There was getting to be need of it too. I was more than thirty pounds lighter than last winter! I believe I wrote to you something of my failure, though very near succeeding, in getting the appointment of the Division Engineer of this Division. It would be the charge of some 120 miles of road. I believe I am capable of filling the Office and accomplishing its business successfully. A failure would have been dreadful: but success in it would have fairly set me up as an Engineer. The salary too, is one by no means to be despised by a poor man. It is more than I supposed. $3000.00 per annum. However I do not repine at losing the chance. It is undoubtedly all for the best in some way. If I have not the pay and the honor, I shall not have the care & the responsibility. As it is, though, I believe I have succeeded in gaining the confidence of Col. Mason, the Eng. in Chief, and the appointment to the charge of the Division, ad interim, is one of considerable honor, as well as some vexation. The former Div. Eng. did not leave matters in very good shape, and there were many conflicting interests and bad feelings among the subordinates to be reconciled, or put aside; beside the disagreeable duty of dismissing and discharging some among them. However I believe I am succeeding very well, and satisfying all parties, better than I had hoped. Mr Mason and the previously appointed new Div. Engineer are