Letter from Cassy on her son's illness and squabbling neighbors

Mrs M D Lyman
Forest grove
At Home March 18th /64

My Dear Friend:

I was glad to get your letter – glad to hear that your children had escaped serious illness when so many little ones have fallen. Oh what a winter this has been – it will surely be re-membered by every mother in Oregon with its long, slow days of weari-ness, anxiety and heartache – it has seemed to me to be as long as long as three ordinary ones. My little boy is decidedly better. And words cannot express my thankfulness as I see his amaciated form gathering strength and plump-ness, and his eyes resume their wonted brightness. That dreaded disease is still raging – it seems as though it never will run its course. We have had fine weather for some time. I think I never saw a lovelier spring. I feel all the while like rambling in the woods and gathering wild-flowers

Can Willie find flowers as read-ily as he used to? I think I see him now twirling a stick in his hand and talking to the trees!

I have no flowers or shrubbery yet but shall get them as soon as our yard is faled in separate from the orchard which will not be until next winter. I find that farmers and farmer’s wives have a great many things to see to, and a great deal of hard work to do, and yet it is an independent way of living and I would not exchange it for any other

I often think of you my friend with love and gratitude, and of the many quiet hours which I have spent in your pleasant home.

I remember the counsels you gave me and they have been of great service to me in my poor endeavors to lead a Christian life. And for your great kindness to me in my lonely, orphaned life I fervently pray “May God bless you & yours and greatly prolong your useful life.”

I am looking forward to June with anxiety for I certainly look for you in that month – and also Mr Sott’s folks. You mustn’t to fail to come. I presume your children have been attending school this winter. Mary will start next week, I think. We have no society here as we used to have – neighbors are so busy jangling and quarreling amongst themselves they have no time to attend to any thing else. When I think of the terrible sufferings of our brave sol-diers in the past, and the deep anguish of bereaved wives and mothers and poor orphaned children, it seems to me that the course we in Oregon are preserving is positively sinful. We give our thoughts to our trivial everyday affairs just as though no cloud of war hangs over our dear land. I go to my neighbors and they show me their new clothes, talk of their blessings and their grievances, but of the sufferings of the battle field scarcely a word. It seems dreadful – this apathy I am sorry I cannot feel more. Well I must close as I am at the end of my little sheet. Please write soon and thus oblige

Cassy