No 15 Cottage Home, Iowa Sabbath afternoon, March 5th /65 My Dear Husband, Yours of Feb 16th was received yesterday, I was highly pleased with the length as well as the cheerfulness it exhibited, and as I followed you in imagination in your trip to the Great Southern Metropolis, and over the shell road to Lake Ponchartrain, O how I longed to be with you, to enjoy the beauty of the City and its surrounding with you by my side, to enhance the pleasure.  But I can only witness it by the eye of my imagination, for I never expect see any more of the "Sunny South" than my imagination and your pen can give me.  Give me a home in the free enlightened, but frigid North, with those I love and I am content.  You speak of stopping with Hedges family, I suppose they must be keeping house from what you said of stoping with them; I hope if you pass through New Orleans while they are there that you will make Mrs Hedge a present worth enough to pay your lodgings at a hotel; I am too proud to al-
