Home, 14th.
Dear Mother:
If we haven’t much to tell, we at least haven’t any bad news among it.
We have a wet nurse with plenty of milk, now, & a supplemental nurse that is handy & loves the baby. We have discharged two nurses [lately. ]whom we had in place of these.
Mrs. Dr. Gleason left here when Livy was decidedly & distinctly out of danger & then Susy Crane staid till a 3 or 4 days ago1 when Livy had become wonderfully better & hungrier & chattier & cheerfuller, & departed for Elmira, Clara Spaulding relieving her. Clara is here yet. We play 3-handed (cut-throat) Euchre & other games, although Livy lies in bed. Livy sits up 2 or 3 times a day an hour to 2 hours at a time but cannot walk a step (& won’t for a month, I think, tho’ she puts it 10 days.)
We leave for Elmira as soon as she can travel, & the agents may take their own time about selling the house.
We spent the most of this morning-hour talking about you and rehearsing gratefully the fact that she you have dropped [affairs ]of the highest importance more than once to come & cheer & help & comfort us in our great need2—& I don’t believe anybody has so good a friend & mother [ & y ]as you are to us, or one who is so loved, & whose motherly ways & [deeds ]are so more g gratefully remembered & sincerely [ appe appreciated].
Susie is to go South immediately. Her physicians says that with great care she may live a good while, but that it is imperative that she spend her Springs South.
I Charley is pining for Europe again, & I think a majority vote can be polled to let him go. He is to[o] uneasy & spasmodic to be of the fullest comfort or usefulness, either, at home.
Go on “fixing up” out at “Faro-Bank,”3 for we are personally interested. We look forward to [ n ]two or three weeks of genuine comfort & placid satisfaction there in the summer.
Love to all the old household & the new branch.4
Lovingly
Yr Son
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L4, 360–361; MTMF, 150–51.
Provenance:see Huntington Library in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
lately. • [deletion implied]
affairs • affarirs
& y • [‘y’ partly formed]
deeds • deeeds
appe appreciated • appereciated
n • [possibly ‘w’]
