"Dear Grandmama: I cannot describe to you the conditions that surround
me. The boundless extent of the country, the wildness and beauty of the
prairies, the roughness of this frontier town, above all the people
themselves. The house I am living in is unlike anything you ever saw;
but yet it is very comfortable. And my hostess, Mrs. Spurgeon, as well
as her granddaughter, have treated me with all the consideration that
my own kindred could do. I was very dangerously ill and they took care
of me with wonderful solicitude; particularly Zoe, who nursed me and
scarcely left my side. Now I am well, or nearly so, and they insist on
my living with them. I pay two dollars a week, or about eight shillings.
And everything is clean and nice; the food very good, delicious bacon
smoked with hickory wood; but altogether the diet is unlike what I was
accustomed to in England. It all seems like a story, first that I
should meet Reverdy Clayton when I landed in Chicago from the steamboat
which had brought me from Buffalo. He offered to bring me here on his
Indian pony. But I was afraid to risk so long a ride, especially as at
that time I was beginning to feel very badly. Then it is strange that
I should get here and awake from an illness so serious in the house
of Mrs. Spurgeon, whose granddaughter Sarah is going to marry
Reverdy ... one never knows whether to attribute these things to
Providence or to the accidents of life.... Perhaps you were right never
to tell me about my father's marriage to the octoroon girl; but you must
have known that I would find it out on arriving here. It has caused me
much thought, if not disturbance of mind; but I have worked out my
problems, perhaps impulsively, but still to my own satisfaction. Zoe is
about the color of an Indian from Bombay. She is a beautiful girl, and
shows her English blood in her manner and her active mind. I do not
believe that there was the slightest danger that she would have attacked
the will; but many considerations moved me to divide the estate with her