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[upside down at top] Tariff and Sub Treasury are rather obsolete ideas nowadays. Besides I have not much time for them now. For principle - I believe in "Free Trade" & Direct Taxation

                                                                                                This is Grouts. Nov. 19th 1848. I.S.Metcalf

Well Joseph, I believe I must write another letter to you about this time; although perhaps I may not find much to say. This is rather a barren country for news; and for thoughts probably still more so, except something or others of Railroads or Bridges. Cares & perplexities are perhaps more plenty than ideas; for those i need not write to you as you probably have about your phase of them already. To you, I expect one ought to write something besides of the "actual"; perhaps something to "expose & undermine that solid falsehood, the Material" I believe however I happen too have no ideas of my own, I must go to your letter, for some, I guess Question, quotation from Prov. Phil. I do believe in it and I hardly know how much. Neither can I tell how much of superstition, or how much of philosophy is mingled with my faith. The idea of the "context" is perhaps that things may become so familiar to the imagination as to seem familiar to the senses. One may read & think so much of Palmyra, Rome or Niagara, that when at last visiting them, their very scenes seem familiar. That & much more is mere philosophy, the philosophy of the imagination the other that some would call mere superstition, may be only the same imagination will further carried out, and more mixed up of Memory & imagination together. Farther than this I hardly know as I would do to go much far. lest we get out of the world & no philosophy into some new world of Mesmerism or some kindred affair. By the way there are projects I hardly dare to look into. There are it seems to me great