“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 equally.  She took care of me with the most affectionate interest when I was ill.  Besides, the land is not worth so very much, and one half of it will give her no fortune to mention.  She is in danger even now, and the future for her is not reassuring.  Illinois is supposed to be free territory, but it is not so many years ago that a vote was taken in Illinois to have slavery here, and it was defeated by no very great majority.  And now the Illinois laws are rather strict as to colored people.  The country is beginning to be feverish about the slavery question.  I saw evidence of this in New York and on the way here; though just in this place the matter is not so much agitated.  Yet the other day a copy of a periodical arrived here called The Liberator, and it made much angry talk.  I will not tire you with this subject, dear grandmama, but only say that the effort here and everywhere in America seems to be directed toward hushing the