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Farmington Oct 29^th 1839.

My dear brother,

I am surprised that you have any difficulty in finding the thing we sent for. The exact words of its title are “An Appeal to the Christian Women of America,” if I mistake not; I have not a copy by me. It is a little smaller than the Almanac, & contains only 12 pages of rather large type. I suppose it does not cost half as much as either of the books you have sent, and is better adapted to be useful here. I will send you one if I can find one.--

I have never known so much sickness here as this season. Mrs Root, Mr Bidwell’s housekeeper, continues very feeble, and no better from week to week. Mr Hills is now well. You must not mention it, for it is not talked of here, though I suspect it is generally known, that his was no typhus fever, but delirium tremens! Shocking – shocking! and in a man, too, who was never grossly intoxicated, though he has been in the daily habit of drinking. Surely, our “sinwill find us out.”-- Mary Whitman has now been sick nine weeks. About two weeks since Dr. was nearly in despair, and no one thought she could live; every day we heard she was failing: till suddenly, a week ago last Friday, her cough diminished very much, even in ^that one day, and from that time to this, she has been steadily and rapidly recovering. She now sits up two or three hours every day.

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If she does recover entirely, it will be most astonishing. I wish this were all I had to say of this family, but I must tell the rest. John and Jane have been sick several days, and Dr is anxious for both of them, and yesterday Mrs Whitman was confined to her bed, utterly unable to help the suffering children. They have all the same disease – typhus fever.

If there is any family more distressed than this, it is Mr Wm Cowles. Poor Margaret and Maria have been fading away very rapidly for two or three months. Margaret fails from day to day. Tomorrow they expect to set out for Mobile, and their father is going with them. I went to bid them goodbye yesterday. There is little reason to expect that they will ever return. Indeed, Margaret hardly looks as if she could live to reach Mobile.

Oh the world is full of suffering, and yet every scene of gayety and festivity goes on as if there were no such thing as death – as if we had never heard of sorrow.

Yours as ever,

Charlotte L. Cowles

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Mr. Samuel S. Cowles.

Hartford.