"precious" you see I have made up my mind to have you come out here this summer, maybe you'll surprise me some of these days by making your appearance unannounced, Who knows but I believe you are not very fond of surprises yourself and consequently not much addicted to making them. I suppose you will think, well truly Mary is full of freaks, here the last letter she was "lying awake night" troubling her brain about how we were going to get out of debt, and next letter she's off to Illinois, without as much as saying "by your leave" but I can't help it, that one trait my character that's carried on though a great many difficulties, quick to decide and act but when I sell my estate in Spencer Co Dindy Dandy, I can make it all right, and perhaps have some left to help you to dress up.  Now My dear Husband while I feel very grateful for your sympathy in my loneliness, I don't want you to work yourself into the belief that I am a heroine, for I think that I am very far from it, to be sure I feel keenly the loss of my own pleasant home and the society of a loved husband, but who has a better fathers house to go to than I, and so many and such good friends; while many a woman is left with five or six little ones to care for, and eke out a subsistance for herself and children, our of what her husband can spare, or save of his hard earned $13 per month. I am so glad to hear that away there in the Army, where vice and imorality grows as it were spontaneously, there were a few left that had not bowed the knee to Baal, and who as true prophets of the living God, ceased not to pray, and their efforts have been blessed in the conversion of so many didn't the scene of their baptism carry your thoughts back to a scene on the river Des moines, where a holy man of God baptized willing subjects into the likeness of their Saviors death?
