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Anna DW. 1856 My Dear Daughter I received your letter was much surprised. & grieve at your sickness weakness & distress think you must have had a sad time of it Hope you will soon get your strength & that all will be well in the end. I hope your Caroline is with you & am sure you must need a good girl is Lizzie a help to you or only an additional care & burden Anna's Mary is very excellent help when she first came here it was very hard getting along for she & A. could not understand each other at all, but now Mary takes the whole care in the kitchen & she makes uniformly the very best bread & without soda or saleratus. She makes her yeast by boiling Hops strains the water & boils par'd potato's in it then puts in some flour & little sugar with a little of her old yeast to ferment it at the top of the saccharine fermentation she bottles it up & it keeps good for 2 or 3 weeks. She sets her bread to rise over night but & believe she never lets it get sour or acid [up side] There is a grand exhibition going on to close the ? term of school in which Hattie is to begin by playing a duet acting in a tableau & diagoque & reading compositions. It is to be in a public hall & the performers are to dress on ?&c, &c. All quite exciting to scholars but foolish & impervious to studies. Libby is quite well now will be able to go to school steadily & I hope next term My love to Lizzie if she will write to Hatty she will be happy to answer for.