.MTIxNQ.OTQ0NTA

Boston July 18th 1839 Dear Brother I received your letter in due season and was happy to learn from it your good health, good spirits and I hurt good progress. it friend starts tomorrow for Bangor, and I improve the opportunity to scribble a few lines in answer to yours, but you must not expect a very long, or a very sensible letter this time, for I have only two hours in which to finish the letter to Mother and this, and, besides, a little accident happened to one of my eyes a day or two since, which makes it a little painful when closely applying myself to writing or reading. We have not heard from Mother since I wrote you, but expect to every day. We are all well, James has had an ill time but is better, Almeda is pretty well now, but cannot walk far; little Lucy is not very well to day, owning to the heat perhaps; sister Lucy enjoys herself very well, has not got much acquainted yet; it seems rather odd to me at first to go to meeting and about, with a sister taller than myself; I suppose 'you have' grown out of my knowledge quite as much as she has: but you are old enough to obtain the growth and stature of a man- a tall man- I like to see a tall man,-but be sure and have your intellectual and moral growth correspond with your physical, and then you will be a man indeed. We had at Sabbath school celebration of the 4th which was very interesting & with which Lucy was exceedingly delighted, particularly the singing which was performed entirely by about a hundred little girls & which was really very fine. Did you read an account of the steamboat excursion of the sabbath schools of New York? The great temperance dinner you have I suppose seen a notice of: it is said to have been the greatest occasion of the kind ever known here. Mr. Whipple and Bush attended it, and James probably would, but he wished