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Hope. Feb. 22nd 1963 My dear brother & sister: I was very glad to receive your kind letter, and to hear of you and the children. Glad to hear you were all comfortably well. Glad you had got some coal. Glad O'rocke had gone, and you were going to have another girl. Glad I was mistaken in thinking I was forgotten. Glad my voice was missed at devotions. Glad little Eddie remembers Auntie Mary, and asks God each night to bless her. And I assure you each expression of kind remembrance is heartily reciprocated. I find my school-house and school in many respects pleasanter than I anticipated. My school-house is a new, neat looking white building very pleasantly located in a grove which in summer must be very delightful. The play-ground is enclosed by a board fence. Inside, I found Sherwood's newly improved patent school furniture, seats and desk, maps, charts, three good sized black boards and a little one, a globe a magnet a little frame of balls ("like Sarah Taylors" Abby) for the little ones mathematical exercises, a stove like the one in your parlor, (but much injured and in need of the polish) a clock, &c. &c and the windows shaded with curtains like those in your kitchen, I have 50 pupils have had 55 but 4 or 5 of the written down left hand side of page I have found more time for reading than I thought I should. I have read "Miss Gilberts Career" by unclear "Among the Pines" by Edmund Kirke. "Sunny Side" The home of Washington Irving, in Harper's Monthly - also "Idle Wild" The home of N.P. Willis Gray's unclear and much other miscellaneous matter, Mearion Lester, a portion of "Wau-Ban" the early history of the West by Mrs. Kinzie, Mrs. Rooney's Souvenier, and now reading, Bayard Taylors visit to Loo Choo & Japan by himself of which there is an unclear in your unclear of American Historians, and "Parson Brownlows Sketches of the rise progress and declined of Secession" - I presume you saw the account of Gen Tom Thumbs "Great little wedding" - yours affectionately - Mary -