I have just receivd while here, and want to thank you for, I can’t answer, your long & long hoped for letter. As to the Sanitary Commission, I will say that it strikes me you are cast down by that which was inevitable, (which is always a mistake), for human nature & the constitution of human society are as much facts as the tides & as inevitable in their flow & reflow. I am sorry chiefly that it affects you so—for all the rest I was sorry, long ago.

As for your hopes of me, my dear fellow, they had better be dried up. I purchased your high estimate of my abilities apparently by useing myself up. Writing only so much as this brings a gripe in my side that is like a blow on the head to my constantly regerminating hopes and ambitions.

I am going to layout a burying ground near here & it is a great comfort for me to have that object—other than the heart-sickening waiting on gold, which, so far, don’t come. I am very well so long as I don’t think.

As for the public affairs—we now are firing our cannon over Sheridan’s victories in the Shenandoah and with the news of them (added [259] to Atlanta which is itself since your letter was written) comes the news of Blair’s retirement, a fall of over 50 cts in gold & general confidence in the failure of the Copperhead election campaign. So I hope that you are taking brighter views. But who knows what a day may bring forth? Grant will have tried it again, I dread, before this gets to you.

We had a delightful—glorious vacation in the mountains this summer & are all much the better for it. Mary was in camp two months.

I am anxious to hear about Prof Bache. Give my love to them—to Bloor & your wife.

Dr Bellows succeeded perfectly here. He left last week with the warmest regards of all good & true men.