Phil^a June 9^th

 

My dear Mother It seems quite a long time since I have heard from North Providence and yet perhaps I am the one in debt I really cannot remember who wrote last I only know time has been at the greatest premium possible since the last advice & I have been sadly in arrears in all my correspondence excepting to Walter I dribble just a few lines to him whenever I can get the opportunity as I know he is so isolated just now I had a nice letter from him day before yesterday written most cheerfully he seems to be well occupied I will enclose his as it relates to his movements & you may not have had a letter as recent as this. I hear that Edward has left practice & drills men all day and is ready to head for Washington whenever he is sent for & that father intends going to Brookline this summer is this so we heard this from a Mr Williams from Brookline who knows Edward quite well & has had his practice / in his family he likes him very much.

Arthur Blake came to see us last week he said he would dine with us if he could that morning & he left us with the intention of going to D^r Norris about his throat which was dreadfully painful and he often lost his voice I could see he was afraid of Dyptheria and did not wonder Johnnie was on his mind & he spoke of him two or three times he did not get back to dine with us but he took tea & spent the eve he was on his way home from Washington where he had been to get Henry reinstated in the Navy he resigned it seems in disgust when the Annapolis Naval school broke up and in consequence of their refusing to allow him to go home at the time of the funeral of Johnnie (it did seem hard) of late however many of his friends were drafted for the Colorado which left last week and he was very anxious to go with them his father was very sorry but as he seemed so desirous Arthur undertook the mission to Washington and succeeded without difficulty so I sup / pose Henry will be in Pensacola before long Arthur was very sorry he did not know Walter was in Washington as he would have tried to have seen him he had a letter to Col Mansfield but he found he was so deeply engaged he did not present it he tells me the Col is one of the most responsible men at W—  now he lived in Brookline you remember he says he looks years older since he went to W— & he thought it would be a great shame to trouble such a careworn-looking man with a private letter. I have had Hamilton Wild visiting me for two weeks and Annie Deland staying here at the same time her visit was a sad one enough she came on to be with her aunt as much as possible whose only daughter of nineteen was in the last stage of consumption she is now dead poor girl and Annie has left me it was very depressing all around and her cousin was a most intense sufferer toward the last her bones were entirely through the flesh for ten days before she died and she was / several days passing away her poor mother bore up wonderfully under this hardest of trials and when the body was taken on to Salem their former home Annie went with her aunt as far as New York. the funeral took place last Sunday afternoon & they reached Boston at six in the morning & being Sunday they had to go to Salem by carriage [?]

 

            We had thought to spend the summer at home in town but it has turned out otherwise Mr Bradford has taken the place that formerly belonged to Mr John Tucker once a president of the Reading Rail Road for the summer & invited us to go there & share it with them which we shall do it is a magnificent place only a half hours drive from town & the place has fifty acres with a brownstone house of twenty or thirty rooms there is a splendid garden with green houses & graperies where there is every variety of flowers & grapes a fine gardener who was once on a time gardener to the Earl of Aberdeen George intends getting a donkey & cart for Emma & the girls to drive & we shall have a horse & Germantown wagon (like Mr Blake's carriage he had made here) for the summer to do as we please with it is rather an unexpected termination to our summer arrangements but not disagreeable & it offered most suddenly to us all we think ourselves fortunate Love to Mary Minnie & all & believe me

                                                                                   

Yr loving daughter Susan Wood—

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