Otego June 3d (1877)

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Dear Brother

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I have again for a long time neglected writing to you but will try to do better in future. Do you have fruit up in that cold climate or any thing that is good to eat? I suppose you have fresh fish and fowl but do you have pies and cake. I think of you coming home and wonder if I should know you for you must have grown old as well as the rest of us in twenty five years - we all change. Elvira and I are keeping house. I don’t care as much as I would to work out but it is pleasanter and I’m so near worn out I feel as if I must have it so I can stop and rest when I feel as if I must weave carpets. I can weave 4 yds a day when every thing works right. I have 1 shilling a yd. It has been very warm and dry but to day we are having a nice shower. Lucius and his family are well as usual, Mary and Ade were well the last I heard from them. I have not seen Mary for fourteen years and Ade in twelve. It seems too bad that we who were sheltered under one roof once should be so widely sundered but there is one consolation. I we love our Lord we shall meet where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. I have always flattered myself that I should see you again in the flesh and have pictured to myself what would the meeting be but this I know my heart would deeply rejoice to hear your living voice once more. The potato bugs are making havoc with the potato. Some places they do not plant many for it is such a job to destroy them. Some take a pan and go along and knock them off the vines onto the pan then kill them. Others take paris green and dust them with that. It is not the bugs but the slugs that do the damage but you kill the bugs before they lay their eggs and it is clear gain. Lucius’ little boys killed two or three hundred apiece on their little garden patch. Last year potatoes were a dollar a bushel. There is promise of abundance of fruit. We had a long cold winter and a late spring but everything looks promising now. There was one of the Franklin students here the other day inquiring for your address. He was a member of the E.C. society and wished to give you an invitation to attend the reunion. We had quite a fire here a few weeks ago. Hunts old hotel and barn and sheds and three or four other buildings were burned to the ground. There had been 5 or 6 houses build between the hotel and where Brewer used to keep store. They tore down a small shop and then succeeded in stopping the fire. The furniture in the hotel was mostly burned. They saved the things in the other buildings. They went to carrying things out of the other buildings as soon as they found the hotel on fire. The fire was discovered about 11 o'clock at night. Some of the inmates had barely time to escape and almost every thing was lost. Some saved a few of their clothes. Good bye. Please write soon. May the good lord bless you and keep you from all harm.

T Chase