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991 West Jackson street, now Centre Avenue Chicago, January 23d? 1879

My dear daughter Your letter of January 4th I received this morning at my office where I had had to wade my way through heavy drifts of snow and whence I returned this evening wet up to the knees and steaming? from perspiration?. For this, really, is the most trying winter season I have yet gone through out West here. And, unclear, we are comparatively lucky in a large city where even the heaviest snowfall cannot, for longer than a day, withstand the head of hundreds of thousands of feet. Terrible, beyond all power of imagination, have been the sufferings of the poor settlers upon the vleak parries of Minnesota,