SOLON ROBINSON, 1844 381 



Letter from Solon Robinson, 

 to his friend richmond of staten island. 



[Albany Cultivator, n. s. 1:92-93; Mar., 1844] 



[January 20, 1844] 



Much Respected Friend — Your letter in the Culti- 

 vator of the present month, 1 has been read with much 

 pleasure by me, and I hope equally so by the thousands 

 of readers of that paper : who I also hope will be pleased 

 to meet their old friends and acquaintances in the new 

 dress that friend Tucker has very properly put on. This 

 method that you have adopted of interchanging facts with 

 one another as individuals, seems to me to be a very fa- 

 miliar and happy way of conveying useful and amusing 

 information to the public. Your letter too is a most com- 

 plete illustration of my own theory, that if we will it our- 

 selves, we can always find an abundance of material, out 

 of which to work up a letter that is not only entertain- 

 ing, but conveys much useful instruction. To me it 

 sounds like the conversation of an old acquaintance from 

 the land of my birth : 

 The land of rocks, and hills, and gravelly knolls, 



Stone walls, and wells, where "oaken buckets" swing; 

 Where rivers rapid run, and where tide water rolls, 



And back on mem'ry's page the scenes of childhood 

 bring. 



For among the rocks and hills of Connecticut, I was 

 born. Although you probably thought little of doing so 

 when you wrote, yet your letter conveys much geological 

 and geographical information. It tells me too, that some 

 of the inhabitants of my native state, like many others 

 of all other states, are actually advancing backwards in 

 civilization, when they strike from their vocabulary an 

 ancient historical name, because it is Indian, and sounds 

 barberous in our delicate ears. But we differ in taste. 

 Now to me, 



1 This long letter described a "visit to see the Improvements on 

 the farm of Mr. Morris Ketchum, at Westport, in Connecticut." 

 Cultivator, n. s. 1:33-35. 



