Canandaigua Dec. 13
My dear Augustus
I was very happy to receive a letter
from you last week and had not any moment of
my time since then, been fully occupied I should
have answered it before now. Thomas has had
company, two ladies from Auburn, who together with
my own family managed to keep me pretty constant-
ly employed. Today for the first time we are
experiencing some winter weather, (a visitation
which I presume you have had for some time)
but it contrasts so decidedly with the almost summer
temperature we have had all the fall that we
complain not a little of the cold weather.
It is Sunday and I have been to church once but
found it too uncomfortable walking there to re
peat the experiment a second time. Cousin Fan
is sick and your Uncle is very much engaged
making a lamp shade, — a singular employ-
ment for the Sabbath — and I am getting dinner &
writing. You speak of your disappointment in
not seeing Frances and myself at the Point this

summer. it certainly could not be greater than
ours was, but your Uncle has wasted so much
of his time these two years past that he
thought he could not afford to have us take
long journeys. We are now all looking
forward with great pleasure to the period
of your final return and I hope your a-
bandonment of a military life. I am
perfectly heart sick reading accounts of that
unjust disastrous Mexican war and am
thankful beyond description that you are
in no way connected with it, though I much
fear it will continue long after you graduate
Fred has changed as much as you think he
he has. there was no intermediate stage with
him. he subsided at once from a little
boy into a young gentleman. He is a
great favorite at College and stands high
in his class. I am expecting him and
Clarence (and I hope your Mother Willie and
the baby) here to spend Christmas with me.
It is past a year since they were any of
them here, but I have been in Auburn some
five months of that time I give them but little
opportunity to visit me.

You say you expect your cousin Frances will be Mrs.
somebody before you again see her. If present prospects
are not extremely deceptive she will change her name
in the course of a year or two — not sooner — certainly
not before you return. The young gentleman to
whom she is engaged is poor and has just com-
menced the practice of his profession and it
will be many years before he will be in a sit-
uation to support one who has but little idea of
denying herself anything she wishes to be possessed of —
Dec. 16 — I commenced this letter Sunday and it has
been lying in my portfolio ever since because
I had not time to finish it. It is Frances [ twenti ]
birth day and the recollection of the many
changes and chances which have befallen me [ in ]
that time, makes me sad. Fan says she dislikes
to have her birth day come around because I make
so many lamentations over the years past. Her beau has
just been in and made her a very pretty present
which seems to be more acceptable to her than my
sermons (as she calls them) are. I have not heard from
your Mother yet this week though this is the day I usu-
sually receive a letter from her. I hope when it
does come it will contain the information that they
are all to spend Christmas with me.

Do write again to your Aunty and I will try
to answer it more punctually. Though there is
nothing in Canandaigua to interest you I often
have Auburn news that is amusing.
Frances sends her best love to you and says she
would write if there was anything to write about.
Your affectionate Aunt — L Worden
Cadet Augustus H. Seward
Military Academy
West Point