I’ve got to do something right off and I an’t a cent of money more than enough to pay the postage of this letter.
Last night when Mis deacon Allen went by with the newspaper she had got to the P. O. she stopped and read me all about your getting rich so sudden and she said to me brother Silas if I was you I’d just write to that Miss Brewster and if she’s a woman with a heart in her she’ll feel for that poor motherless little feller there a toddlin about, and you with your hands tied sos you cant leave him a minute. I’d take him myself said she if my hands wasnt tied too. Which is true enough for shes five of her own and one adopted.
Now Miss Brewster if you could take my baby for a while, his name is Orlando and he is 18 months old and help me make a man of him and get on my feet a little and carry out a scheme I’ve got for an improved churn I’d thank you to my dying day. I aint a great hand at farm work for I cut my foot in a mowing machine and have been lame ever since and my hearing is bad. So you see there aint much I can do except invent and sometimes if it want for the inventing I think Id rather die. But I do feel sure sometime if I can only get a chance I can invent something that will sell and then I can repay you.
If you send for Orlie to go to Boston I must stay there too. I couldn’t bear to be so far away from him. I should die of lonesomeness. Couldn’t you get me a chance there? I am forty-six years old and a professor.[[1]]
Yr. ob’t servant,
Silas Kittredge.
[1]. Of religion.—Ed.
CHAPTER IV.
Notwithstanding all that England has done for the good of India, the missionaries have done more than all other agencies combined.—Lord Lawrence, in 1871.
... all this is very surprising when it is considered that five years ago nothing but the fern flourished here; native workmanship taught by the missionaries has effected this change; the lesson of the missionaries is the enchanter’s wand.... I look back to but one bright spot in New Zealand, and that is Waimate with its Christian inhabitants.—Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches in Natural History and Geology.