Otego April 3d ‘69

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Dear Brother

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I came to the resolution a few months ago to write to you once a month but I have not lived up to it and I about believe I ever shall but I mean to write oftener than I have done and I want you to do the same. How do you occupy yourself rainy days and evenings. Do you hunt and fish, how far are you from the coast and in what latitude are you. Do you have frost way up there or what do you live on. Do you dress in fur or clothes, tell all about yourself and what you eat. We have had a long snowy winter but I don’t think we have had as extreme cold weather as we have some years. I have thought about you a great deal this winter way off from us all in that wild region away from civilized life, no books or papers. I wish you could have the Tribune, that would keep your heart in sympathy with your kind. I have feared that long association with those different races might make you unsocial when you return to us, for return I believe you will but it may be after I am sleeping my last sleep for I feel sometimes as if I should not last many years. My feet are not light as they used to be and my spirits too are sad at times when I think of my friends that are sleeping their last sleep, of our good father who for years has been mouldering back to dust. I feel almost willing to be called by the death angel. When I lost Pa I lost my best friend and I sometimes feel as if he was all the friend I had that could help me but I suppose that this is all wrong. You can’t think how sad and lonely I am at times. It would be almost like heaven could I roll time back when we were all together, no care or thought for the morrow disturbed our heart’s repose. But that can never be and I do hope we may so live that we may be an unbroken family on the banks of that beautiful river that flows by the throne of God. When you write please send a lock of your hair and we want you to write a piece for the Otego paper. You know you are a good writer and you have met with adventures enough to fill a big book.

from your Sister Tempe