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Joseph. This sheet is partly to you the other to Anne & a word to Eliab. Thursday Dec. 2d. It is Thanksgiving Day in Vermont. but I do not happen to be there today. It is a very rainy day. but a time in the Northfield R.R. office. The President Alvah Crocker Esq. is about & some of the Directors full of all kinds of business. The Head Bookkeeper & Pay Masters of the Corporation are up here, paying off Irishmen &c. &c. by scores. Bills of all kinds for piles & sleepers, & plank & stone, and work & Board, and every thing else. Besides all this Engineers are up from below, with the Conn. River big bridge builders; drawing off plans, profiles, elevations, sections, beds, foundations, abutments piers, parapets, &c. &c. &c. of the bridge. it is rather a busy time for a rainy day. You may imagine that We underlings have to stand round of course. My regular business is of course all interrupted But it will not do for me to get out of the way. I must be ready for every call, to make a little calculation or estimate here, draw a little plan there, or go off to call some absent man. Just about this time I have nothing to do but to wait. ___________________

             This Bridge across the Connecticut River is to be a Magnificent Affair. The Cost not less than $6800. Probably considerable more than that. The Contract requires the work to be superior to that of any R.R. bridge in the United States!  It is built by the greatest bridge builders in the Country. Messrs Stone, Harris & Birnie.  This is but one of many great contracts, on their hands now. For instance they build All the bridges on the Great Atlantic & St. Lawrence Rail Road. One of these R.R. bridges, they are all after the same patent, some invention? is in it self quite a sight.
 Think of a Great bridge, this for instance is about 700 feet.