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Anne Jan. 8 Westfield N. Y. Jonesboro. Feb. 6, 1852 Westfield Jan. 8th/52 My dear brother

  I believe I have already sent you two letters since the date of your last. but as I have good reason to think you have written as punctually as ever, I attribute my lack of information from you, to the uncertainty of the mails at this season of bad travelling.  I presume mine are long in reaching you, if not lost.  this place being a little off the direct line of communication from east to west, detention will oftener occur;  I find that letters from Bangor and Milo seldom come in less time than they did at Racine though a thousand miles less distance.  I hardly know how to wait any longer for news from you -have been expecting some every day for two weeks;  receiving letters is my greatest pleasure and answering them comes next in the scale of enjoyment- each one of my correspondents now owes me a letter, some of them two so I hope ere long to have quite a treat.  Christmas week I had three days vacation, wrote a long letter to Eliab in reply to one from him dated East- Hampton- wrote another to Lucy and mother about as long and sent her a second on New Year's day - another holiday which I spent solitary in my room making a butterfly pen-wiper of fanciful construction, enclosing it in my letter to Lucy for a New Year's offering?
 I suppose Samuel is gone into the woods