P.S.  Julia asks me to add, to tell Mary that the English speak in the highest terms of the work being done all through this country by the missionaries, especially in an educational way.  They say they are doing much good.

[To his niece, Clara Cramer.]

New York City,
Sept. 27th, 1883.

MY DEAR CLARA: 

On my return from the trip over the North Pacific Railroad to the Pacific Coast last Friday, I found your excellent and welcome letter, with enclosures.  Your aunt was very much pleased with your letter and poetry as well as with your essay.  They all do you great credit, and I think you can well sustain yourself as a writer with any young lady of your age in this or any other land.

My trip over the northern route to the Pacific about completes my personal observation of every part of our country.  I was not prepared to see so rich a country or one so rapidly developing.  Across the continent where but a few years ago the Indian held undisputed sway, there is now a continuous settlement, and every ten or fifteen miles a town or city, each with spires of the school house and the church.  The soil for almost the entire distance is as fertile as that of Illinois.  I saw your Aunt Jennie yesterday.  She is quite well.  All my family are well and join in love to you.  I think neither your Aunt nor I will ever visit Europe again.  We may, however, change our minds.  But we are getting a little too old to enjoy travelling, and then we have such pleasant homes for both summer and winter.

Love to your father and mother.

Yours truly,

U.S.  GRANT.

3 East 66th Street, June 10th, ’84.

DEAR CLARA: 

Your letter, with one from your Aunt Jennie, reached me a few days since.  I regret that I have not more cheerful news to write you than I have.  Financially the Grant family is ruined for the present, and by the most stupendous frauds ever perpetrated.  But your Aunt Jennie must not fret over it.  I still have a home and as long as I live she shall enjoy it as a matter of right; at least until she recovers what she has lost.  Fred is young, active, honest, and intelligent, and will work with a vim to recuperate his losses.  Of course his first effort will be to repay his aunts.—­We go to Long Branch this week.  We expected to live with Fred this summer in Morristown, N.J.  But failing to rent our cottage we will occupy it and Fred will live with us and rent his if he can.

All send love to you, your father and mother and Aunt Jennie.

Yours affectionately,

U.S.  GRANT.

[To Mrs. Cramer.  General Grant was then writing his Memoirs.  Dr. Cramer was United States Minister to Switzerland from 1881 to 1885.  Simpson is U.S.  Grant, son of Orvil Grant.  Reference is made to the customary resignation of diplomatic officials of the party opposed to the incoming political party.  Cleveland became President in 1885.]