Lowell July 1. 1860. Massachusetts.

 

My Dear Friend Anderson

                                    Your last letter arrived in due season and I was very glad to receive it. I passed the one you enclosed to Jenny and she has expressed herself very glad to hear from you. She would have written an answer to go with this, but said she should not have time, as she was upon the jump all the time in the shop, and her mother is very sick at home, which requires all her time when she is there. The girl is honest and it is about as she says. Oh, William, I would give a large part of what I am worth if I could have a third of the spare time that you do. By Jove I have been on the muscle here in this store ever since last January without being out at all and only then to go to the funeral of my Grandmother. You do not know anything about being chained to your business, but you will plenty soon enough. I suppose ere this, you have decided whether to remain at Sligo Plantation another year or not. I presume you will stay if Mr. Williams comes down agreeably with the "ready". / Because you know that it will be a great deal better to have a pile when you start large enough to fall back upon if anything should happen, than to think that you are running it neck and neck. You lay up a thousand and you can easily make it earn you a hundred a year which will more than clothe you, and as for the feed you can pick that up as you go along. I wish you would come to old Massachusetts to study law, and I think you never would regret it. There are one or two offices in Lowell which will afford you as ample facilities as any in Boston and you could take your six months at the Dane Law School in Cambridge just as easily from here, as from Boston, and it would not cost you only about half as much for board. I am inclined to think that the South or West would be the place for a lawyer to make the largest and most expressive figure in—either financially or politically than in the Eastern or Middle States. I am a convert to this doctrine only recently, and have the ground for my faith well defined in my mind. I would like you to ventilate your ideas upon the subject as you are somewhat acquainted with the topography of the same, personally. I liked your / last letter very much, it was so like talking with you. I have a clear idea in my mind of your surroundings—no matter whether it is true or not—and, I never think of you but what I imagine the whole scene. I should like to see you doing the Frigid to the young sprouts about there. I presume you played it to the life, as I well know that you are able. I suppose you may think that I have no business to ask it, and perhaps I have not, but it would give me a great deal of pleasure if you would not be so ceremonious in answering my letters; you have you say a great deal of leisure time, and if it would not be to blamed inconvenient I wish you would write me as often as once a month—and oftener I would like, although I will not breathe it—whether I answer or not. I will send you papers magazines, anything I can, in return, and write to, but I do not have a chance to do the latter when I wish to, and after a fortnight or so goes by, I begin to feel ashamed and think I will not write until I can write a good long document that may seem to make up for the delay. It takes me just about two hours to fill such a sheet as this to you, and I cannot command that time together very often. It is not because I have for / gotten you, or anything like that, as you well know. Bro. Weeks, my friend who was so long here in the store with me has gone to Sanbornton Bridge, to prepare himself for college preparatory to his ministry. I believe you knew his leanings some time ago. We are preparing to celebrate the Fourth here, in a style worthy of Young America. The Celebration will cost the city about $5000, which will pay for considerable fun. I am getting into the "sere and yellow" and don't care much about such things. I am glad to know that you had such a pleasant Christmas. I always thought I should rather visit New Orleans than any other North American city. Did anything there remind you of New York? How does Blackstone flourish this warm weather? Don't you ever think of dropping the law and dipping into business? If so I will negotiate with you, and we will try it but it must be either South or West. There is altogether to much strife this way, after the half cents to save me. I know the half cents make the whole ones but it dwarfs a man's soul some to be so grasping as we must be to do anything. Then this working all the time is not at all to my taste, but I have a string of evils and vexations which it would tire the most friendly ear to bear with, and I should not intrude them here. Since I wrote last I have sent you ten papers and two magazines, did they reach you all right? With this you will receive some envelopes which you will please use when writing me.

                                                                                   

Ever your friend

Selwyn E Bickford

SOURCES