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and perhaps I may go to Gallipolis so there is still hope you wrote me a nice kind pleasant letter for which I have lovingly thanked you in my heart a dozen times Perhaps my great[underlined] desire to have you near me may prejudice me in favor of a small town, but there certainly is more real[underlined] happiness in the quiet comfort and plain independence so easily acquired in a small town, than in the artificial show and constraint of a city. I wish you indeed? to be ambitious but it is the ambition of excellence and irepentness?. I want you to fulfil the end of your creation viz?, thy glory to God and the good of your fellow creatures, there I want you to pursue with an untiring devotion. Mr. Brice & family start tomorrow, he will pop thro' Chicago, and will return there in a few days, to remain a few days. Riall? told me the other day he would certainly go the first of April, nobody seems to believe him. The Lutton? house has been taken by a Mr. Fulton? of Williamsport. Pa has stopped Harper? because he says he abuses the abolitionists, I could not find it but he says he will show it 'to me. I believe Charlotte takes it and I suppose she will be here in another month. May Slackton &c, are -to- keeping house in the house in which Braddy's? office is. I hope I shall hear from you soon that you are well and happy, it is an ever present hope. Sissy? says 'I send my love', I need scarcely assure? you that it is the expression? of every heart to our dear Johnny. I hear that Frank Barlow has been rejected, the Japan expedition does not want a drunken doctor, and thus? is preparing to go to Australia, poor fellow, poorer[underlined] Mother. Our boy with very very[underlined] much love as ever your own mother M. LM.