Letter 25
Date: 10
januari 1883
Sender:
Harmen Jan te Selle
Adressee:
Mevr. Dela ten Damme - te Selle
Derk Willem te Selle en broers
Firth January 10,
1883
Well Respected and
loving Mother and Brothers with your Wives and Children
Your letter of December
25 reached us and we are happy to see that everyone is fine and
glad that mother is doing fine at her age. It is a big blessing
that a human being here has here on earth.
We too are well and
also the Brothers are well as far as I know. And we do not live
too far apart so if anything happens to either of us the others
would soon find out about. I also read in your letter that some
of our relatives, our uncles and aunts were called to an
everlasting eternity. Yes! But that is the way life is, so the
days leave, there is no standing still at this road, time is
always going on. Hours, days, months, are flying by as a shadow.
But with Jesus as our bail and mediator we can walk that road, no
matter whether this road leads through unbeaten deserts or
wildernesses of disasters and disappointments. Might we be
able to sing with the Poet, "Might His stick and staff support me”.
Now with the beginning
of a new Year we don't know what will happen to us, but it is our
wish that the Lord will give His Blessings to all of us together,
To you and me. Yes to all of us, so we can serve Him as He wants
to be served. May the Lord give this to us
From your last letter
it seems that real winter has not yet arrived there, but winter
has arrived here. For a long period of time we had nice weather
but now winter really has come it is winter indeed!
So as I wrote to you in
my last letter we did not get much of a harvest of wheat, but the
oats and corn harvest were rather good. We harvested 500 bushels
of oats and 4000 bushels of corn from 100 acres. Prices are low at
the moment. 25 cents a bushel for corn, live hogs $5.25 per cwt.,
butter 24 cents and eggs are 2 cents each. Horses and steers
(horned cattle) are very expensive too. Cows were sold this Fall
for $35 ‑ $45 and horses were $100 ‑ $140 a piece. We could
almost miss a horse but we still have over a hundred acres to plow
in May and therefor you need good horses. We have 6 horses
in all, 4 work horses and two young ones. In May they will be 3
and 2 years of age. They are still too young to work.
