Your favor of the 20th inst. reached me last night. I shall try if it is possible for me to leave home just at that time to be in Waterbury at the Fair, and the proposal you are kind enough to make, will be a very great additional inducement. Please offer my compliments to your father and mother, and I think you may add that I accept their obliging invitation with great pleasure. I really hope you will not be gone, but I do not know that I can say anything to keep you. I did not tell you of the talk I had with Bushnell in the boat—I’ll keep it till I see you.

How oddly we met Jackson at Meriden—and what the deuce had [303]become of you, that we could not find you sooner? When shall we three come so near meeting again? Next Sunday perhaps.

Mary Buel I never saw except in the street and at meeting. I did not see anything to the contrary then. It’s a long ways to Litchfield though—and I don’t know how I could court her : particularly as I am busy in the trouting season. I don’t know but I might go up to look at the Winchester man’s cattle—and run away my horse in L. and so break my leg—and court on convalescence. It would not take long if the roads were open to find if she ate clams.

I have not heard nor heard of Bill Colt.

Can not you look me up a mason—that can lay stone? I saw one in Collinsville. He wouldn’t undertake my job for less than $2.00 a perch. Geddes said he could get it done at Syracuse for 5. cents. I believe I shall send out there. There is no one here that knows anything about it.

Your uncle must have been in the very hottest of it in that battle—that last—battle (God grant it may be). I am happy to hear of his promotion. That was not my Captain Smith. His name is something Kirby, or Kirby something Smith—he is thin’ though.

The Hotel has been closed these three weeks—and I do keep on thinking—and don’t do anything else—I might almost say—though I am tolerably busy—one of [my] men having gone and potatoes digging. I am getting along very well. Shall have a better crop than my neighbors—though some rot. I shall send a parcel of them to New York next Monday at 37½ cents.

What do you think of Free Suffrage? You are the greatest Southerner for a sensible Northern man I ever saw. I most want to have a talk with you about Abolition &c. Come now for once just give me a letter on the Wilmot Proviso &C. And the abolition principle in politicks. I never have discussed or spoken upon the subject with a single man—but I keep thinking occasionally and I don’t know but I am growing into an Abolitionist. It seems to me reason has mighty little to do with politics. To all practical purposes I am a vigilant neck or nothing foxy Whig—never hardly losing an opportunity even if it is an equivocal one of helping my party. And yet on my conscience I am a very lukewarm half blooded coon only. The rationale of it is I suppose I am tremendously patriotic (I am, if you’ll believe me, it’s the strongest principle in my nature, if it is a natural instinct. It’s stronger than love, hatred, selfishness, or even I do confess Religion or the love of life itself—now laugh). And wanting to do something for my country I fall hold of the Whig rope because I can clutch that easier than any other. I am going to be a Peace man, too—I am afraid: afraid I say, because it will not be pleasant for me-as I have naturally a wonderful taste for the pomp & circumstance of glorious war. If I could only be persuaded that it was right, there’s really nothing I should like so well as to lead the forlorn hope.. How [304]different I am from you in all this—and yet we are a good deal alike, some. You’ve no sort of sectional feeling—I have the strongest in the world.

I do wish I had not a vote to give for several years to come. And I wish I could keep clear of politics all together till I had a little more judgment, than I have now. I wish you’ll think or talk more on Politics and such subjects of general interest a little more. You are just the right sort of man to arrive at correct conclusions and you ought it seems to me to be using a little more influence among the populus. At any rate with me. You could do more good in one day writing newspaper articles on Political and Moral subjects than you can in writing for the Yale Lit., or for that matter the $5.00 Quarterlies—or a year in a course of law. Don’t you think so? I have often most devoutly wished you would. Pray do write to me now & then.