Your proposition and Mr. Harrison’s letter please me very much but I don’t think that we are free to make any arrangmnt requiring funds. Mr Potter approved and favored all our suggestions but said very distinctly that until he had passed round the hat and tested his friends he could not be responsible for any further expenses. His expectation was that we should supply him with a list of persons properly to be brought together to discuss the matter, and sometime after he shall have moved into town (about 15th Nov), he would invite them to a meeting at his house. A general plan of campaign then would be discussed. He would also see whether he could obtain money by subscription for further preliminary agitation. He wanted the paper which Mr Norman is printing for both purposes, expecting to put {it} in the hands of friends as he should meet them in the street.

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I think Mr Harrison’s letter will please and encourage him and I shall take leave to send it to him.

Meantime if you are disposed to have Mr Harrison go to Niagara at once—that is that he should see it before winter—I will advance half of what is necessary. Of course “the season” is already past and the nuisances of Niagara mainly withdrawn.

I hope Mr Harrison would be able to canvass New York a little in person. I don’t think he would be a bad sort of man to {tackle} Governor Cornell if there should be occasion.

Would it not be well to ask Mr Norman to prepare a part of his letters for publication, as you proposed, in a pamphlet?

Can you look forward to going to N. York to attend the meeting at Potter’s & can you induce some other Massachusetts and Harvard gentlemen to come with you? What day would suit you best about the middle of the month?

We yesterday had our first word by mail from John after he had found Owen. He was at a “hotel” at Spearfish creek & looked better than John had imagined that he would. He was to write again after seeing the doctor. Several telegrams since indicate that Owen is mortally ill, and we are prepared to hear of his death at any moment. Yet there are expressions which imply that John does not realize immediate danger. We shall probably have a letter tomorrow giving us a better understanding of the facts. As yet the history is dark to us. Mrs Olmsted is very deeply stricken. Our hopes have always centered on him. He had what all our other children conspicuously lack