We yesterday recevd yours of March 10th (23d & 3d previously.) & Bertha’s of 11th and are distressed to hear of your illness. I wish you could smoke as well as drink whiskey. I smoke but very little but find that after a meal my nerves are quieted and digestion aided very obviously by it. I hope that with May you will find yourself materially better.

I returned here a few days ago. I find neither Mary nor the children quite as well as I had supposed them to be, and intend interrupting the school and sending them for a vacation up to the Big Trees, next week. It is hard to get decent food here now at any price. One of our servants, Mary discharged some weeks ago, the other intends to leave soon. I am so completely in the dark as to what the Company will do—whether it will be dissolved or not—that I can make no plans for the future. I hope that we go to the Yo Semite again during the summer.

I have just closed an arrangment the object of which was to prevent a Sheriff’s sale and sacrifice of the property. The main conditions of it, a bill of sale given by me to Dodge Brothers of San Francisco, of all [356]the personal property of the Company in Cala about $140,000, in value, with a lease of the real estate, (mines, mills &c.) Dodge relieves the Estate of attachments and assumes the payments of the debts so far as the personal property can be made to pay them. I retain a duty of observation, access to books &c. & control of expenses. The Company has the right to reposses the property on payment of the debts. The men will work the mines for wages and arrears, paying Dodge for goods and other personal property that they need. I retain my office quarters, furniture, books &c. I am entirely without money and telegraph the Company today asking them to provide $5000 by telegraph. I can of course raise money for myself whenever in extremity by selling or hypothicating stocks. I have some strings in reserve however to be used before it comes to that, and think I can live here three months longer without it.

The money market has been remarkably tight in San Francisco of late, & my stocks have fallen a little; this I think is oweing chiefly to a revival of speculation in mining stocks and the need of many holders to sell to meet assessments on mining shares. I carefully studied the market while in S.F. and saw no reason to change the views on which I have hitherto acted. The Bank people rather advised me to expect a fall in greenbacks after the rise which succeeded the capture of Charleston. Fortunately I did not act upon it, though if it had not been for the hint, I might perhaps have bought greenbacks, on which there has since been a pretty rise.

I was in S.F. when the murder of Lincoln was announced. I have never seen such an intense and all pervading public feeling. It was about 9 o’ck a.m. & in a very short time all business was suspended. Stores, banks and offices closed. The newspaper offices sympathetic with the rebels were broken up by a quiet mob; then the militia was called out, and the town was in a state of siege for a few days. The funeral solemnities were well considered and effective and nearly all the respectable men of the town joined the procession.

Today we hear of the death of Booth, & the termination of Sherman’s armistice, which I can’t but hope was intended by Sherman to be terminated in just the way it is. In any case I don’t regret for if Sherman was disengenuous in it, it indicates that he has a dangerous disposition to politics, and he could have done nothing better calculated to make the country cautious of trusting him politically—as otherwise it would have done in any degree he desired almost.

While Mary was in S.F. we went to Oakland & called on Mrs Higgins but she was not at home. I frequently saw Mr H. in town.

In your statement of acct with me you omit $900, which Mary supposes she left in your hands, (insurance money &c) when she sailed, and some amounts since received from Garretson, as I suppose. Please inform me if I am wrong & if not, what all amounts to. I suppose you [357]consider this as a seperate account, but Mary expected you to credit it against my $2000 loan, & I assumed you had done so, otherwise should have remitted balance at the time I wrote for the acct.

I hope my letter objecting to the proposed arrangment with Dr Anderson has not troubled you. The rise in greenbacks since then, has, of course, put a different face upon the matter.

We are very glad to get such a cheerful letter from Bertha.

I think Ally has done the right thing and I hope he will stick to banking. I wish I were a bank-clerk. His letter makes me think I was a little hard upon him—undeservedly—but I guess the net result will not be bad. I never had a hint of his previous inclination to Scientific pursuits. In a bank the first thing he must systematically study is how to get air & excercise enough & not too violent & to nurse all his strength & faculties, & the second not to lose himself in his special bank duties, but have an interest in what is over and above him—in banking & finance in general—looking the country over & the world over. Banking is Science as much as Chemistry—the Science of exchanges of value, and in the end the man will be safest & most succesful in it who pursues it most purely & thoroughly as a Science. Take Mill’s Polit. Econ. as a comprehensive text book. There’s a remarkable article in a recent Edinburg entitled "7 per cent." I hope mother will succeed with her Soldier’s Home. I hear little from the Sanitary Commission people.