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Chicago, Sunday Evening June 29^{th '56}

Dear Bob.

Your letter, which I only received yesterday
morning about 10 o'clock, arrived too late to enable me to com
ply with your request. I have made inquiries respecting
The publications you mention, but [illegible] Byrd & Betts, Amy - have seen
nothing of them. ^{Betts is not in town - I'll ask him when he comes.} My congratulations on your election,
I reserve until my arrival at "The Grove". The papers
I have had sought up and will bring them out with me; the
Ether & ^(Herbarium) paper, I shall send out on Tuesday by the "Bus" dri-
ver; - the vials & "18 corks to each one", I shall also bring out
on Friday. The Alcohol will be ready, to-morrow, at your com
mand. I feel particularly dull and stupid; - and for
the life of me cannot write two consecutive sentences on the same
subject without pausing to think! - a miracle unparalleled
in the annals of wonders; - I mean the idea of my
"pausing to think". I can't write, Bob, that's the
long & short of it. I am thoroughly homesick. I received
a letter from Willie Welch, the other day, and his kind, whole-
souled letter, breathing in every line his generous, noble heart
quite unmanned me. To-day, I was sitting in our little
office room by the dingy window, cogitating on the various poss-
ible employments of ^{the members of} a certain family not over twenty five miles
from me, and when my eye happened to fall on a passage in
Willie's letter, about "angel Girls and noble boys" &c, &c. Nothing
concerning you - so you needn't say, "Oh fudge!" The ^{sound of the} bells
with their monotomous clangour, came lazily stealing over heated
roofs and between tall chimneys, and ^while from some one of the many