You can say to Addie about that picture that I consider an exchange no robbery anything else is

 

Boston May 6^th.

 

Dear Ro^s,

                        Your letter came this morning and as Mr Chase is in town and it's my turn to "lock up" I guess that I shall have time to commence at least. To-day as usual I have worked hard, sold about 12000 p. tips. What I meant by we paying Goodyear & Co's bills was that by allowing them to sell tips for a little less than our regular price but still at a handsome profit we let them get a large share of our custom so that they were making a handsome thing by it. To make short work of the matter we put the price down to bare cost and are / going to see who can stand it the longest. It's a miserable fix any way. Keep mum. I shouldn't care about its coming back here.

 

            But I commenced this letter to write about Call. I would not advise you to go there on any wild goose chase but if Ham thinks there is a chance to do fair I would go. I don't know how it is with you but I am not going to settle in Buckfield yet awhile that is unless I am obliged to do so. I'll say the same about that that S. A. Douglass did about Vermont. "It's a very good place to be born in provided one emigrates early". It's a good thing to go down there and spend a month or two of the warm weather. I like it much, but to settle down there on a farm that cuts about half a ton to the acre, where all the grain one can raise / is oats, deliver me that's all. Could I take a fair farm and spend about $5000. in improoving it I should like to live on it. But to be obliged to work from sunrise till sunset for a bare living is anything but encouraging. Our Maine farmers don't go to work right, they have more land than they can work at a good advantage, many of them at least. I think you have seen farm in this state that would be worth working and we have some in Maine but more that are not.

 

I say go to Call if there is a prospect of doing something. It's a good thing to be at home with friends but what's the use of leading a wooden life. I am not doing anything very remarkable yet but I'll make a strike somewhere within a few years hit or / miss. A good sea voyage might do you a great deal of good, wouldn't hurt you at least.

 

I suppose the folks would feel very bad at your going away but we cannot always live at home and when we see a good chance to do something, to earn a little money and see something of the world I think it best to improove the opportunity. Hamilton has been there long enough to know what the prospects are, whether or not it is advisable for you to go and he says "go" I should go if I was in your place. Could you spend five or ten years there and get a little something ahead you could then enjoy yourself here. It's quite an undertaking and I should advise you to weigh the subject well and if you then find that its for your interest to go, go.—The Atwood boys called to see me this morning. Write soon                                                                                      

Charles.

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