Transcription:
it seems an easy way of making a hundred dollars every winter, yet the time for acquiring as much as I desire, would in that
way, be too much prolonged that money will likely be spent, as the Catholics say; for the benefit of my soul. Those pictures
are framed and I need not tell you that they are prized a good deal Our tutor takes a great liking to the illegible , and
wishes it in his illegible , If more time could be spared for drawing I would send you a picture once or twice in a while,
as I know you have a taste for them around Pal Pal illegible David I suppose is enjoying his adventure very well at the counter?
illegible I suppose the draft panie has been growing old It is thought probable here that there will be a draft soon, but
of course - hope that we shall escape it prevents much uneasiness This war seems farther from a close than ever? How strange
that a country with so many schools and churches should be desolated by so unsightly a monster. Leaves have their time to
fall and though indeed there is a kind of melancholy present when they, withered and dead, are plucked from their places and
shade the sport of the gloomy autumn wind, yet we hardly deplore? their fate, because there is nothing unnatural in it - they
have done all that their creator wished them to do, and they should not remain longer in their green vigor, but may the same
be said of the slaughtered upon a war field. I f you might be successful you would go far to bring the melenism to get love
into those Leopards and Lambs would you not But good-bye I wish Gods blessing for yourselves and little ones Come and see
me if you can as possibly I may have to go farther from home. John M Give me a letter, each of you soon