Transcription:
child. Helen is getting better but is still far from well. In a month or two I mean to take her up into the pine woods on
the mountains for the summer. Wanda is as well as she can be, and will soon finish her course at the University. Louie is
not very well but is about as usual. I have'nt heard from Mary for a long time, she seldom writes. Joanna has been quite sick
but was getting better at last account. Dan went all the way from Nebraska to Virginia as her physician. I am now busy with
Yosemite affairs and endless writing. I wish you were not so far away so you and Maggie could come and stay with us when the
weather is finest in the winter and spring. We have had a great abundance of oranges and lemmons ever since the beginning
of January, and very soon now the cherries will be ripe to be followed by the apricots and peaches and plums and pears and
then grapes, and so on in a sweet fragrant show; and 0 if you could only see the roses I think more than a million fresh ones
open every day on our place, and they may be seen more than a mile away in great masses of white and red and yellow. I am
afraid that the trip you kindly sketched for Helen would be too hard for her at present, Martinez, California, April 17/05.
Dear Cousin Margaret:- I am always glad to hear from you and to know that you are in comfortable health in spite of the
piling up of the years. I am sorry to hear that Maggie's asthma is still troubling her in chronic fashion, but hope the spring
weather will soon set her free again. As for Egypt, the air is very dry there from passing over the desert, but it is often
dusty,and swarms with flies, forming a plague about as bad as the one described in the Bible. We are all about as usual.
Maggie is rather better than she has been for the last year or two. David has had a pretty severe attack of influenza but
he is now well again. Sarah is better than usual. She is now living with her daughter Anna at Pacific Grove,on the sea coast,
about a hundred miles from here. She enjoys her grandchildren and her walks along the shore gathering shells and sea weeds.
She says the waves with their briney breath make her think of old Dunbar when she was a little 06965