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[cross-written across top]:

drowned once- I should like to go every week and learn to row. Tell Uncle Will when he gets a farm he must remember and have a pond in the middle of it and then I will come and see him. But I must close and go do something more profitable[underlined] Love to all

          from,
                Hattie

Hillsdale, July 4th, 1877

Dear Aunt Jennie:-

                        Here it is only nine

o'clock in the morning and we have the work all done up until it is time to get dinner, and I have practiced my music for today, and all because we got up so early. You see being the "glorious Fourth" we couldn't sleep for the bells and guns and crackers. Johnnie fired crackers through the blinds of their chamber window be- fore any of us were up, and then he tied some on the end of a pole and let them off close by my window. Wasn't that dignified proceeding, for a College Professor?!