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[right-hand side]Ann. May 31, 1849

Dear brother Joseph

                        It would take a whole sheet on which to indite an epistle to you, but am afraid I should write too long a letter, - filled with nothing of importance. I am aware that you like things brought to a focus, so will try not to ?iate too much, but I am so much in the habit of scribbling along without order or connection, that I shall find it difficult to keep to a point,- even if I find one...
  First I thank you much for your last good letter, as well as sundry poetic rhapsodics, highly recondite graphic and page torn eradi? enlivening and tickling my fancy concerning Milo affairs.
  You can't imagine how much I want to be there with you now you are at leisure. I have scarcely seen you a minute that you were not in a hurry for the last two or three years:- now I do intreat you to enjoy your time, leisure and freedom from care, just throw to the winds carping care, about what you shall do in the future, - a way can be opened before you in a moment by an All Wise Providence- when the right time comes for you to act there will be enough for you to do, in this age of hot haste and railroad speed. How I should like to sit with you in the front door and see the face of nature grow gay, hear the sighing of the cedars, and  the symphonies of the woodland choir. A favourite plaintive note of one of the birds - common there - the ground sparrow I believe - I have not heard here but I have some that are new to me, and have seen one beautiful bird--plumage all over of a brilliant red: - a bird common in Ohio, occasionally seen here. - I am quite scandalized that Uncle Henry and Charles have not a boat on that river, between them. Is the front yard level smooth and clean and covered with green grass? Are the trees that were set out growing? Does Almeda expect to have a family in her house all summer and  does the inconvenience thereof yield her any pay? Does James work or is he lazy?

[across letter near top] Mr. J.M. Metcalf

                                    Milo Me

[written across top of letter] Physicians in Chicago have made experiments in respect to the miasma in the air have detected it, they know sulphur to be its antidote and are giving it successfully in cases of the cholera: this is what Mr. Hopkins mentioned to day but I neither know nor understand any thing about it more.

  The leaves of the oak tree are a yellowish tinge look as if touched by the frost, the spring here are late but more so than usual this season. I sent a letter to Lucy and Eliab last week, owe one to both Lizzie and Isaac. my eyes will not allow me to write evenings and I have little time.
 The class are not going to study Botany till fall. I am trying to look into Wood's Botany: wish you could help me: it is much more extensive than Lincoln's.