Letter from F. K. Phoenix to Increase Allen Lapham, August 26th

Bloomington Nursery & Garden, Three-Fourths mile N.E. Public Square.

F. K. Phoenix, Proprietor, Bloomington, McLean Co., Ill.

Bloomington, Ill., 8/26 1865 [August 26, 1865]

My Friend I. A. Lapham

Milwaukee Wisconsin

Please don't give me up - "the Spirit is
willing but the flesh is weak."

Did I send you the enclosed. I think
not. I mean J. B. [Garbers?] essay.

What is the cause that peaches don't
grow in Wisconsin as they used to?
I think a cold cycle of years. Why can't humanity do something
classifying causes & effects with weather.

O. how little we know &
when we do discover anything how silly
it makes every man feel to think so
[very?] simple - "Why did I not think of
that"?

Please return [Garbers?] letters &
essay as I have to send the essay back
to him. I am individually helpless
in the toils of business - fettering, withering
crushing for what I see but by I hope
& pray to do a little by way of prompting
agitating there less weighted down.

O. that I might help - that I might
learn something, somewhat, sometime of the great
unknown about us. Friend L. I pray you study
don't give up this subject of fruit & soil & climate
It is to be sometime the great question it seems to me

[margin]

[C--ing?] grapes splendid here. in eating a week. Hartford
2 weeks. fine crop small fruits. Grapes & peaches. a strange
season so far. dry 10 weeks wet 4. dry 2 since May 1st.