Fall River Ms. Aug 31. 73

My dear Brother Frederick

I am troubled about you. I am sure you did not go to Biddeford, or we should have seen you here, and I fear you are sick. Will you not let me hear the exact condition of things?

I staid in Worcester till the next week after leaving Rochester. GertieSherman, Martha Greene "Gertie"

Daughter of Martha Waldo Brown Greene and William Arnold Greene (Finding Aid, Martha Waldo Greene and Frederick Sherman Collection of Frederick Douglass papers, Brown University). She married William F. Sherman in 1872. & WillSherman, William Frederick

met me at the Depot here and arrived at their home, "Mothers room" was fetted up with the home-pictures, carpet & &c. In this little nest with so much around me, linking the present with the past, they have suspended your life-size representation over the door.

One & another of the children look down upon me from the walls, and Williams photographs in different forms, and many other half-worshipped mementoes meet my eyes which ever way I turn. No Frederick believe it not, that with the body existence ceases. It cannot be—I think as I told you as we sat under the trees at the old home, that William was not gone. No, and yet less and less seems he so. Why do I feel so, if it be not so? I know that the one thing I most want to know of all & every other, is the exact truth. Not to believe anything is so or so, but to believe it is what it is; why should I then be deceived in this? But after all, life is such a problem.

I have thought of you so many times and of your expression, that you were "not of relations with the world" Can there not be found a way to get in? My dear friend, will not you ask yourself seriously? Let me help you in some way. I wish I could. Of course you have thought more deeply & perhaps more wisely than I, and yet is there not some force in Uncle Tom's reply to S^t Clair, when he tells him he "knows a great deal more than he and what if he should tell him the Bible wasn't true &c, &c." that there was no use in religion, how did he know there wasn't? And uncle Tom says "feels it in my soul Massa" Why this restlessness with us all, this unsatisfiedness, and the want & hope of something better if the aspiration can never be realized? Don't say "this is simply nonsense," but reconsider and please let me hear how you are in health if no more.—

I go to East Greenwich about the 8^th if Gertie is well enough for me to leave, she has had a slight

attack of dysentery and is now better, but she is not strong and I feel anxious about her.

My regards to Mrs Douglass & believe me always affect & truly

"Sister Martha"

Post office Box 372 Fall River Ms