Sir, I enclose some lines of mine in memory of our much-loved Friend which perhaps you will not think over-wroughtCorrected:overwrought in meaning, others must of course.

I am constantly wishing that you would step forward into the place he has vacated. I believe you would do a vast amount of good and are more capable of occupying his place than any other I know of.

Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk and struck my back on the ice, was taken up for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of vapors from cologne, chloruformCorrected:chloroform, ether, camphor etc– but to find myself the helpless cripple I were before I saw Dr. Quimby.

The Physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should, but in two days I got out of my bed alone, and will walk; but yet I confess I am frightened and out of that nervous heat my friends are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and hopelessly; a paralysis of the bowels and degestive Corrected: digestive functions are the worst sufferings I have at present. Now cant Corrected: can't you help me? I believe you can. I write this with this feeling; I think that I could help another in my condition if they had not placed their intelligence in matter, this I have not done, and yet I am slowly failing.

Wont Corrected: Won't you write me if [?] Unclear or illegible you will undertake for me if I can get to you? I can walk some, the intenal Corrected: internal trouble is all, a want of action

Please write at once

My love to your Wife