Transcribe Lucas, Fred A. Letter to Ward, Henry A. (1882-03-04)

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distance of 6000 miles as a mistake, or does not coincide with your ideas, you do not hesitate to reprimand the unlucky assistants precisely as if they had deliberately done you a premeditated in- jury. Now while I plead guilty to many mistakes I am not aware that I have not done the best I could according to the light given me. You may not think that some things you say seem at all unjust or hypercritical, but you have said and don some thing that it is hard for me to forget. Two years ago I left my Father dying and returned to Rochester to superintend the preparation and shipment of material for the Berlin International Fisheries Exhibition. I remained in Rochester until all but one small lot was packed and only left then because I was almost daily receiving letters from my Mother asking when I could come home. When I did my Father had failed so that he did not know me. Now for this you wrote that I had done well in securing material and then proceeded to reproach me severely; first because some skeletons, which so far as