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In pursuance of this plan I am writing this letter, you see! I am getting along finely in my profession, in fact, much beyond my expectations. What my wages may be I do not know. Perhaps with my opportunities for advancement, I ought to be satisfied without wages at all. At present prospects I shall be capable enough by next Spring to be worth about fifty dollars per month. Circumstances on this road have been just such that I have been put forward so far just as fast as i could wish it. Most, in commencing the business are obliged to serve in some inferior capacity for a year of two at least. perhaps carry a rod for the Level for a year or two without ever getting hold of the instrument itself, or any other instrument. I have now been on the road about a month, instead of being confined to one inferior employment. I have had opportunity to become acquainted with many. In fact, feel already quite familiar with the whole business of Engineering, as far as concerns the surveying & laying out of a road preparatory to building it., preparatory to the work of the paddies. I am now Surveyor of a party of Engineers running a line from here to Bellows Falls. Not the head of the party, his business is to go ahead and tell where to run the line, but the surveyor whose business it is to carry the instrument and run the line. And better than all that; as good luck would have it, the compasses all happening to be out of order, I had to run a line all last week with a Transit. Thus giving me a still better opportunity