.MTcw.Mzk4NjM

La Porte Ind. Feb 10th 1864 My dear good Wife:

                  How glad I would be to see you & the children this Evening & spend with you my birthday night. Your photographs are now all before me on the table where I am writing & looking kindly up into my face as much as to say " we all love you." Wife, Eddie, Winnie, & "Ba" You do not know how much good these representations of my heart's treasures do me. But I wish you were all with me in very deed to night to exchange with me warm kisses of affection & words & acts of love. I am forty years old to-night. I can hardly realize that I am so old, I used when a child to think that a man 40 years old was an old man.  I do not feel now that I am an old man however others may regard me. How rapidly time passes away. How soon Earth Life will be past although we may live to "three-score and ten." Have you thought of me to-day. You who are away off among the hills of New England amid the scenes of your childhood & surrounded by your old friends. I presume you have for I doubt not but that Every day you think of your husband. I assure you I think of you & the children almost constantly. I am in fact really homesick here. Since the Mill Matters have come to a focus I feel as if I want to live as far away from