My dearest Calvin,

The last letter I received from you was posted at Strathcona on the 5th inst. The time does seem so long between your letters. I do not want you to feel worried as to writing, but it seems to me if you had a little method and just fixed an idle time for writing me. For instance on Monday, after the Sabbath's work is over, before you begin preparing for the next, could not you write and tell me about the services and how you got on and if any any [sic] comments are made. It is all so interesting to me and I never hear anything about it, and it just makes me feel afraid, that you are kept on the full run all the time. Do not try to write me a long letter, but just a few words of what you are doing once a week. How your prayer meeting is attended. You say you do not mind the cold, but the accounts of it with you sound terrible. We hear that that [sic] it has given Mrs. Fletcher her old trouble, bronchitis, she is in Winnipeg, that fearful Western climate! I am sorry circumstances settled you there, so far away. It came in cold here yesterday, after some very mild days, our January thaw, I suppose.

Jack Osborne is improving, it was a very bad kind of grip, his throat was so swollen with white spots they thought it was diphtheria. Our Annual meeting is to-morrow night. I do not know if I told you, how mad Mr. C. was when we found a deficit of over $400. Cannot understand it, although $4000 of debt was paid and 400 for Dr. F's jubilee one would think people would keep up their giving, but it appears that the falling off is in funeral collections. I am afraid there are not such congregations on the whole as there used to be and certainly no increase, in spite of the beautiful music. Such a lot of money spent on it, so many salaries. I have just been thinking that if the laymen of the church really did Christian work, such as visiting and praying with the sick and other matters such as you had to do in connection with the envelopes there would not be the necessity of paying assistants, but the ministers are left to do all the work and one man cannot accomplish it. When I am sending you Syd. Little's [?] is there any thing else. Think I had better send you tooth brush and paste. Cannot write more now, must run off to the mountain. Write your next letter to R., I'll take it as to me. Take good care of yourself and may God bless you dear boy.

Your loving mother

M.B. McQuesten

[P.S.] Tom bought me 50 shares in Cataract and got my first dividend yesterday but my stock is not yet paid up.