You see by the date of this letter that we are staying at a house on the edge of Lake Calhoun. It is a beautiful sheet of water, perhaps a mile and a half or three quarters the longest way a nearly a mile the other way in breadth; it has an outlet by which it MTT itself into Lake Harriet, which lies a little ways to the SE of here, and that again MTT into the Minnehaha and goes over the falls. We are staying at the house of a Mrs. Hamilton, a widow, and one of the first settlers near this lake. The house is surrounded with very thick woods which is full of great big musquitoes, so when you walk in them, particularly near nightfall, they swarm around you in such a cloud that you can hardly see through them. There are also a great many pigeons in the woods back of the house, (though I should hardly know them from a musquito here by size) which are breeding, and I found the nest of one this afternoon which had but one egg in it which I took. The lake is full of fishes and we have them at every meal almost. I went into St. Anthony this morning where I put some birds and clams in alcohol and got some blotting paper to press flowers with and I have just been putting some away to press under the bed post . . . You want me to tell you how things make me feel but I will not do so about the musquitoes. It is pretty warm weather here all the time now. We had a thunder storm last night but I did not know it till I got up this morning. Mr. Thoreau and I went in swimming this afternoon and then we went to walk and we came to a pond hole near some woods which was full of shells and frogs . . . Mr. Thoreau continues to get better and I am very well of course. We drink lake water here. I will write more before I send this letter, so Good Night,

Your loving son

Horace Mann

I wish you would leave the “Esq” off when you direct my letters because that is not any part of my name.