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Isaac Jonesboro Union Co. Ill. Dec. 10 1851 Jonesboro Union Co. Illinois Tuesday, Dec. 9, 1851 Dear Antoinette Your kind letter of Nov. 22, is just received. I am going tomorrow morning to Cairo and that region for a week or ten days. So I will write a bit tonight, though I have little time, as it is already rather late in the evening. Your hopes that the winter here may be one of health appear likely to be realized. It is apparently quite healthy now every where here. The miserable sallow wretched ague stricken countenances of the natives {as they seemed six or eight weeks ago} are getting to be quite tolerably healthy looking, more like those of comfortable human beings. My own health I believe is getting quite firmly established, and I really enjoy the kind of weather we have here lately very much -- cool, bracing, frosty. I fear however we may not have much of it. The winder is often only a sort of rainy season, or if snow falls, at all, it is only worse melting into this Mud in a day or two. There has been no snow as yet, hardly to Whiten the ground for a half hour. We are hoping however to get the out of door work pretty much completed for the winter within a