Friend Emma,
The shades of night they close around and the heated rays of the sun are seen no more.
I am seated not within your Father’s house to spend an hour with you in social chat, but far from there in Walton town.
Domestic pleasure reigns supreme. Now and then the lightning’s flash light up the heavens above and the thunder drum of heaven beats steadily along. Alone I am within my room. My lamp gives light to guide my pen. My thoughts go back where I have been.
It has been very dry and hot here, a splendid time for gathering crops of hay…As to wealth and beauty they are of little consequence. “Riches take to themselves wings and fly away” and the prettiest flower “it soon will fade.”
I’ll say with the poet: “The richest thing that one can find is to have a contented mind.”
In regard to that picture I shall do just as I agreed. You send me a better one and you shall have this one again. I don’t know as I am to let you judge the quality of the picture either.
If I change with you, it will be the third change I have made within a short time. I think this one just suits me. I never get tired of talking or writing for I never talk or write enough to get weary.
Write soon, Chester Beers
The Austins, End of 1870
One of Emma’s poems was published in Moses Dow’s, Waverly Magazine.
Sadly, in December 1870 the youngest Austin, Randolph, died. Not yet two years old, Randolph was their second child to die.
Previous Posts
1. Is that the New Teacher?
2. The Math Tutor
3. Chester Beers to Friend Emma, Correspondence Continues
4. What is the News? October 29, 1869
5. The Merry Laugh of the Village School
6. Teaching Advice in a Poem
7. I Would Not Wait for Erie’s Train
8. 1870 Highland
9. Mrs. Prindle’s Soliloquy
10. February 28, 1870, What Is the News?
11. Who Teaches in the Village, April 1870
12. Fair Hagan’s Pool, June 1870
