Dear Joe: When you notified the congregation, this morning, that your chapel would be open, next Friday, for the reception of various rehabilitating supplies for Michigan’s unfortunates, it seemed to me that in specifying the articles needed, you omitted a class of quite important necessities. Through you, I beg to contribute an article which belongs to that ignored class: therefore, accompanying this letter, please find a deck of cards & a cribbage board. When a man has lost his all, & his heart hangs like a lump of lead in his body, there come times when an hour’s innocent amusement is more worth to him than bread & meat & clothes: it unbinds him from the rack of his thoughts, it charms his troubles to sleep, it refreshes his spent forces, it is balm to his bruised spirit.

I am not actuated by any frivolous or unsympathetic impulse in doing this—as you would know, without my telling you—but by a much better & worthier motive: one which more than one stricken & despondent man & woman in Michigan will understand and appreciate. I want this box & the cards to go to the burned district; they will find a friend there, somewhere.

I enclose, also, some money, to buy more cards with. No—to buy what you please with.