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Nice,Oct.18,1869.
My dear Mother:

The last letter which I received from home was from Pa,and I was very glad to learn by it that you were pretty well, and that the family in general was flourishing. Your summer seems to have yielded you fruits and vegetables in perfection and at, as it sounds out here fabulously cheap prices: Pa talks of peaches at a few cents a basket, tomatos are thrown at one and so with other things which it makes one's mouth water to read of. Fruit is too expensive here for people to indulge in much,- excepting grapes and figs in their season, when they are cheap enough: but peaches, pears &c are sold by the pound instead of by the bushel.

But after all it is breadstuffs and meats which are the important production; and the former seem also to have been abundant this season in the United States. I see that the President has issued his proclamation for a Thanksgiving, which is certainly called for. "Oh, that men would bless the Lord for His goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men."

I left Mary and the children on the lake of Como while I came down here to get the house "to rights" for the winter. But we shall let it, and spend the winter ourselves in Florence, in the hope that it will suit me better than Nice seems to have latterly. I have not had a severe attack of my "ould complaint" for some time, but now and then slight ones which, however, compel me to lie down helpless while they last. I am as thin as a hatchet but my friends say that I look pretty well. We have had a wholesome summer, never very hot where we have been in the mountains; I have had a capital appetite and have eaten well, but, being naturally of the lean kind I do not fatten.

We are exercised about sending Johnny to school; unfortunately where we are obliged to spend our winters there are no good schools, and so we must send him off somewhere. However, I don't think it is