Yours and John’s of 26th reached me only this morning. (Why so long?)

Our folks are expecting a visit from Mr. Randall and family of Cortland. The rain may prevent their coming today. Mr. Geddes seems to think Randall a very great man.

We have some cherries, and within a mile is a cherry orchard which sends some bushels to market daily. We are eating pies from them. We live well. Mr. Geddes is very abstemious himself, not eating much besides potato, bread, coffee, tea, and gravy—the latter more particularly. But we have fresh meat well cooked and served, half the time at least—and silver forks every day.

We are unfortunately late with our garden. Lettuce we have had all the time. I never eat it. (beet tops, ditto). We shall have new potatoes and some green peas for Randall. Also (for him) pines and melons—(cost 4¢) cucumbers, &c purchased in Syracuse. Tomatoes blossomed. Sweet corn [256]backward. Currant pies, lamb, and veal—and good beef, mashed potatoes (always for dinner), &c, &c., old stories. Very Yankee Indian pudding. Very light & white bread and milk always. Chickens as often as Jim gets a chance to shoot them for trespassing in the new sowed fields, &c. A make shift dinner now and then. Not of boiled pork &c. but pork disguised as a pancake—fried in butter.

We have excellent water and an ice house so handy that they never think it is not worth the trouble to use it. Mr. Geddes drinks Congress Water and a little brandy for the stomach’s sake. And we have tea three times a day and very good coffee for breakfast.

I think now you and John will be satisfied.

Skaneateles is at the head of Skaneateles Lake, not Seneca. The member of Congress you did probably call on there was, I believe Mrs. Geddes’s father. The Shotwell farm is in Seneca, is it not? The woman that entertained you, I suppose, was here last week. She is in a premature dotage from an affection of the brain. She lives, they say in the finest place on the lake.

You ask who Sara Porter is. She’s a plaguy fine girl I calculate. And my business over there is probably to fall in love with her. She is Dr. Porter’s daughter. Your old member of Congress’s (who was also M.D.)’s granddaughter. Lives somewhere in Skaneateles and don’t play very well (or very much) on a vile piano—they say.

I think Greeley “is indefensible” and Polk pretty “near right.” Tell me, John, where you think Polk so far out of the way (in regard to Mexico). I like Cassius M. Clay and would vote to make him Vice President at least. For President my choice first would be to nominate old Harry, next Judge McLean, Crittenden, Clayton, and I would vote for Taylor or Soup before I would for Calhoun or Wright. Perhaps Taylor would make an excellent President. The skilful disposition, management, and partisan diplomacy of a frontier army is prima facie evidence of a talent for government—governing. It was in Old Jackson. He showed it. To be sure, he did show also (but equally after and before his nomination) strong passions and a hasty temper. But Taylor has no Ambrister and Arbuthnot—what’s their names—on his hands. I suspect Scott is a vain, ambitious, though talented man. His defence of himself (which Major Kirby says he knows he wrote himself, though it is commonly denied) is thought to be a very able, talented production.

There is a good and I think very correct article on Greeley in the last True American. I will try to send it to you. The T. Am. is a real good paper.

I am pretty confident the Supreme Court will nullify the Bridge. It would be a very dangerous precedent.

I have acknowledged Mr. Dixon’s kindness and express my “high respect.”

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“Boggy Stow”—quaint name. I don’t know what “Stow” means—but I hope it is more promising than the rest.

I have learned to file the knives and all about our mill. It grinds more cob-corn than Fitzgerald’s promises, too—but does not grind flour.

The postmaster promised to mark that letter single, or I should not have sent it. My postage account for this quarter (ending yesterday) was just $1.00.

That reminds me of what I am sorry to say. I am afraid I shall get out of money before you come. You will wonder how. I have been more liberal than I should have been if Mr. Geddes had not, entirely out of kindness and to save me the payment of forty to fifty dollars board, taken me in and entertained every way so handsomely. But I have not been at all extravagant. My Expense Book accounts for nearly $10.00 and I have nearly that amount left. But I was thinking, between postage, puppy, ($2.00), picnic, & Porter, it would some of it be gone pretty soon.