09. Harry's Letters, August-September 1865

and there is no one here who can do it properly.

This is a specimen of genuine California jewlery -- the stone being rich gold bearing quartz, and the setting being the native gold of the country. Although not of marvellous value, it is worth something as a curiosity and is probably the only ornament of its kind in New England. There are doubtless plenty of quartz seals and rings, but I don't believe there are a dozen buckles of the sort anywhere out of California and Nevada.

Pray accept this trinket, Nellie, and consider it as a birth day gift from

Your affectionate friend Henry R Mighels.

[in pencil right margin] Aug 28, 1865

Due 3 c/

[Aug. 28, 1865]

[Postmark:] CARSON CITY NEV.

Miss Nellie Verrill

Norway Village

Maine.

Carson Sept 10th 1865

Dear Nellie: The telegraph apprizes me that the mail steamer "Colorado" is in and my inclination is to wait until your letter comes (as I feel sure it will, by tomorrow night) before writing to you. But this is Sunday, and therefore a leisure day, so I had better improve it, for I don't like being bothered with business when I write to you.

Our summer weather is all gone; and Jack Frost claims the nights and cold blustering winds

the days. This early and sudden coming of fall reminds me of Maine; and so I sigh for the happiness which lurks in the dear old village which you and I love so well. As the cold weather is creeping upon you, I suppose you are preparing to come down from your lofty summer retreat to take winter quarters in the village. Pray think of me when the snow falls and theres a snow-ball as far out towards this far western world as you can make it come. I shall remember one thing when our snow comes too. I shall be reminded that when my hat blows

off, I can possibly pick it up without being laughed at and that I can go quietly and dignifiedly home without being pelted with frozen lumps, as I have been by somebody. Perhaps too, I shall think of certain pleasant sleigh-rides that somebody and I had last winter -- and which I wish we might repeat without waiting and hoping so long and so very far apart. But you remember my telling you that my phrenological formation developed our immense bump of hope. It is there yet -- and helps to cheer me in my labors and loneliness. Yet does time