Letter, Kate Gleason to James Gleason

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William Gleason,
Manufacturer of Machinists Tools,
Office, Brown’s Race,

Rochester, N.Y., Jan’y 30th. 1889
Dear Jim,-
A good deal of the advice I am administering to you lately
is to write letters to various of your friends and relations and I
grieve to see that you are not following this advice in all cases
which is wrong of you for the advice is good. For instance my
suggestion that you endeavor to placate Miss Emma Michel, 146 Henry St.
Detroit, Mich. for forgetting to make her a farewell call as you had
told her you would, ought to have been acted upon and I see by her
last letter, received to-day that you hav’nt written her yet. And
Father has said three or four times that he would like to know what
you mean by not writing to him because you owe him a letter. I
would advise you to write to him Sunday. He told me to tell you that
he has just made the effort of his life in getting up a device for
his lathes that will make it impossible to throw both feeds in togeth-
er. It is part of the feed works, I think he said, does’nt cost any-
thing extra to make and all the other devices for this purpose cost
$10 to $20 to put on and do not work effectively. He says that you
will not have to make any changes or improvements in the tools for
20 yrs. yet. The new shafting lathe with the arrangment for driv-
ing from the tool stock end, patent water attachments &c. is also a
great success. We are building a funny looking lathe now for a
Boston concern. It is a 42” 24 ft. lathe with two heads, two foot

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stocks and two carriages. In fact it is two lathes on one bed, the
advantage is that when a specially long piece of work has to be done,
one head, and foot stock and carriage can be taken off and you will
have the full length of the lathe to work on. Father does’nt
think much of the idea but the man wanted it that way so we are
building it. We seem to have gotten into the Brooks Locomotive
Works as we did into Holly’s. They bought one of our 38” lathes
and as soon as they received it ordered another and we are building
a 54” planer for them.
I’ll send your costume promptly tomorrow and as
soon as I have time, will get a table-cover for you. Just now I am
doing a land-office business between the machine shop work and some
arrangments I am trying to make to have Mrs. Jenness Miller come to
town to lecture before our club. I am enjoying life exceedingly
just now, strange as it may seem with you and Emma both gone and I
hav’nt found a suitable young lady to cultivate as I intended in Em-
ma’s absence either but I have made deep impressions on two young
men or else they have succeeded in making me believe I have and you
know yourself that a thing of that kind adds considerable interest to
life. I can’t tell you about these “crushes” in detail as it
would’nt sound well in print even if you should find it interesting
which I doubt. We had a party at our house last night, Mother’s
Euchre club, and in preparation she had taken up most of the carpets,
had the walls re-papered, the curtains laundried and had time to put
back most of the things she tore up so that the house looked very
nearly as well as before she began to make the preparations. In add-