Popular Education^ anil Other Matters, 247 



ZAN >uary 2j , 1868. 



SISTER: I have held on steadily, and closed my 



series of engagements last night vvitliout losing a lecture, 

 but it has been harder and harder work. I have had a ter- 

 rible cough, which has been equally distressing to myself 

 and my audience. I could not give another lecture, and 

 yet I think my cold is in that state that if I can stop to 

 rest it will quietly leave me. The speaking tears it up 

 every night. Last night, when I had begun to speak, I 

 had a spasm of the throat that lasted four or five minutes, 

 embarrassing and alarming me very much, but it soon 

 passed entirely away. 



SARATOGA, March j, 1868. 



MY DEAR MOTHER: Earle will report to you that I got 

 home to New York safely, although pretty well used up. 

 He left me yesterday morning at Mechanicsville in the 

 midst of a furious snowstorm. The cars got to Saratoga, 

 but could go no further. Tommy* was there, but the 

 storm was so blinding and furious that we almost gave up 

 the idea of trying to get over to the larm. We had a tough 

 job, I can assure you, and were two hours getting over. 

 The road was buried out of sight, and the drifts were deep, 

 some of them immense. Tommy said the snow was three 

 feet on a level before, and we have had another foot or 

 fifteen inches. The house this morning is completely buried 

 in. I find the house tight as a drum, every door locked 

 (and the key hid) but the kitchen. The house is as neat 

 as waxwork. The kitchen is kept swept, the stove pol- 

 ished, and Tommy has a harness, which he has been oiling 

 in the back kitchen. One of the cows had a calf the night 



* Thomas Welsh was a young Irishman who had been left in charge 

 of the farm. When Vincent Youmans and his wife went out to Winona 

 to live Edward took the farm off their hands. He sold it in the course 

 of the spring, and then secured for the faithful " Tommy " a position in 

 the Appletons' printing establishment. 



