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I wish I could have more favorable accounts of your health Lucy. It requires a good deal of patience for me to be confined three or four weeks my health is good now I did not get up from my confinement so well as when Helen was born. I have a little half breed girl that helps me a good deal altho she tries my patience sometimes. My family is large most of the time two and three men beside my husband. Tis fortunate perhaps that I have children, and a good deal of work to do for the moment I have time to think my mothers sickness and death are before me what bitter bitter hours they were to us but death had no terrors for her. She could not talk much. I asked her what we should tell Samuel "Tell Sam the Lord Jesus" - the rest was inaudible. She breathed her last sweetly as an infant on its mothers breast. It seems as tho I had just begun to know her worth, had just begun to love her when she left us. She over here and staid three or four days three weeks before she died. The last I heard her sing was "Why not stretch thy wings and fly. To yonder world of joy. Father looks like a shadow I suppose he has written you there is a prospect of his getting the goods. They have written you of course of John's sad accident poor fellow I'm fearful he will have a stiff elbow. I must beg forgiveness for neglecting to write you hope you will not take pattern by me, or think it is a lack of love -children bring many cares and works. Mr Haskell was very sick the last of August two or three weeks. Helen was sick two months with the summer complaint we despaired of her life