The Grinder Papers — page 196: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

*= THE GRINDER PAPERS. 191 NUMBER TWENTY-THREE. TWO EPISTLES DROPPED INTO A CORNER LETTER-BOX, Letter First. New York, May 30th, 1866. Dear Piety :—I take up my pen in hand fur tu write you a few lines. Ever sense Icame tu York I’ve intended tu write, but such a place is enough tu skeer all literary ideas from the most intilectable o minds, and what with the fixes you get intu | continnerly, and the thievin’ critters and impostures, and the number o streets, and their distance apart, and the length o time it takes to go to places, and the number o cars that run the wrong way that you're sure tu get in, I ain't had time fur nothin’. . Besides, I suppose you've heerd o’ Jonathan’s weddin. He’s united in the matrimonial sittervation o’ life tu that critter, whose name I can’t mention, even on paper, such 1s my emo- tions—she ’twas brought up with principles o’ rectitude, and has turned out a viper, and knows howt ‘twouldn't be consistent with my principles fur tu live tu Peekskill no longer. I'm purty well off, thank fortune, and kin live where I choose, and jest now I think Ill stay tu York. I’m tu Amandy Floger’s pa’s, at present. I was there the fust EComicboo cS m