Buffalo NY 1898

Buffalo NY 1898
Mr. Edwin R Caine
3025
Kansas City

790 Potomac Ave,
Buffalo, August 1. 1898

My dear Mrs. Neff,
I wish I could express to you the pleasure your letter has given me and I also wish I could tell you how the quick grief as to the unknown writer was once satisfied and quickly changed to a warm interest as I read the pages of your delightful letter and before I reply to that portion of it pertaining to your question and it's real object. I wish to say something of our cousinly relations the names of your father Edwin Caine and your mother Helen Galt seemed to possess potent charm, that brought back the past and made it a living picture. It sent me again to the days of my childhood when "I was eleven years old" and "in Ludlowville" it was there I first met your mother and I became her friend. I think I have never seen her but once since that time but the friendships formed in youth are apt to be lasting, unless some much disappointing influences shall crush them out. So my early affection for your mother today is sincere and pleasant and quite at her service! but it was your father who was my family first(that was before my knowledge of Col. John)!!--and he was always my favorite cousin. I never saw him after his marriage and only rarely heard of him, but I like all who knew and loved him, mourned him in his death. Your introduction of yourself as his child, wins an interest for you in advance and I shall hope to know you better. That we have_______in common is evident from your desire to possess the dear old clock. I also have a clock that once hung on the wall of the "South Room" of grandfather's house. As long as I can remember anything, I remember that clock. Mine is an eight day clock, does not strike, has a weight so heavy it has once gone through the bottom of the clock only just escaping breaking the register and taking a good piece out of the bear bored in it's heavy fall. Mine is known as a Banjo and is first in my dearest possessions. It ticks so slowly and as you say is it's own dignity. It was patented in 1819 so I have a real data that satisfies me. I congratulate you on having your clock and I am pleased to know it has fallen in to the hands of an appreciative descendent.
We have certainly a mutual friend in our dear Sue Clark and she has shown herself in full and generous sympathy with our family interests. She may have told you of my relation to my friend Miss Lord with whom I make my home. After a friendship of many years, circumstance brought us most closely together, and I have been with Miss Lord for the last thirteen years, our friends are each other friends, and when the postman brought your letter to me we were sitting on the veranda and I naturally after reading it gave the contents to Miss Lord. She was quick "unfinished"