I feel it to be my duty to write to you at this time thanking you for your grand work "Science and HealthEditorial Note: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy " of whCorrected:which I have been and am still an assiduous student When Mr Adams came from BostonEditorial Note: Boston, Massachusetts. I proposed joining his class but his lowest price was 25 dollarsEditorial Note: $25.00 in 1886 is the equivalent of $833.82 in 2024. cash & I had it not. I am teaching and doing the best I can here, but the ground here seems to be clean swept & burned over only here & there [?] Unclear or illegible  a spear people here as a general thing think they know it all when they know but little I have not lost heart or hope or faith – and am trying to do the best I can under the circumstances – If we cannot do much acting or active work we can do a great deal of being —to be to do to suffer There are some dear good true souls here but those I have met mostly poor like myself —

I send you by this mail the last issue of a paper I published here for a year A pamphlet on the woman questionEditorial Note: In brief, "the woman question" generally references women's suffrage but more broadly addresses women's roles at home and in the larger society, including political, economic, and professional representation. Hughes may have been referencing an early version of a work she later published as Hertha: The Spiritual Side of the Woman Question (1889). published before I ever heard of applied Metaphysics Also a monograph on our California (The California of the PadresEditorial Note: The California of the Padres: Or, Footprints of Ancient Communism by Elizabeth Hughes, was published in 1875.." published before Bancrofts bookEditorial Note: Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832-1918) published a multi-volume history of California. appeared – It has been translated into Spanish –

I have no motive in writing to you but to shake hands with you across the continent I never expect to see you for I am already old in years but old in no other way- on the contrary getting younger every day. —