Deposit            August 19^th 1855

 

                        Dear cousin Alice

                                                            It is a good while since I received your letter and probably you think it is high time to receive an answer and indeed I think so myself    But there are one or two reasons why I have not answered it before    One is that my time is pretty fully occupied when I am well                    another is that last week and week before last I was so sick with a billious fever that I could sit up only about long enough to have my bed made and drink a cup of tea or I think I should have answered it during that time

 

But however seeing that I have got about well I will try to write a few lines now    I like going to school here/very well but while I was sick for the first time in my life I was rather homesick     I thought then that I should start for West Hartford just as soon as I was able to bear the journey but now I have got well I have got over it some

 

Speaking of being sick my mind naturally reverts to Newton I thought of him often when I was sick I think of him often when I am well sometimes when I am thinking of the many hapy times we have spent together I seem to see him and to hear his voice just as he used to speak, and I cannot realize that he is gone that I shall not see him again when I return home

 

I feel that if I had been taken away when I was sick that I should not have been like him prepared to go and I trust I feel thankful that my life has been spared yet longer I have not forgotten the conversation/which we had last spring. I have tried to live up to the good advice which you then gave me but I fear I have fallen far short of that end. but I will not give up I hope that I shall yet become a Christian before I die

Please answer this soon love to all

 

                                                Yours truly

                                                                        R. K Woodruff

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