Thank you for your letter that I received yesterday. I also received an old letter that came from Freetown. I am in good health, but I see from all the letters I have gotten here on board that there is sickness at home. I hear that Ludvig wants to go to sea. I am sorry to hear that, and I have some advice for you, Ludvig: abandon those thoughts about going to sea. Now is the time you can choose whether you want to suffer hardship in this world in order to earn a living, or choose to earn it in an easier way. If you choose a trade or do something else at home, after your work is done you can safely go to bed at night, pull your blanket up to your chin, and sleep until the aroma of brewing coffee reaches your nose. But if you go to sea, you will be together with a lot of rough people of all different sorts who will expect you, as a young boy, to do whatever they demand. If you don’t do things correctly, you might get a kick from one, a beating from another, and be laughed at by a third; and when you are laying out on the top of the yardarm on a dark autumn night, the rain beating on your face, listening to the howling roar of the hurricane with the sails flapping against your ears, perhaps then you will see the truth of my simple letter and wish you were at home in your soft bed. The time that I was home after sailing on the Durango and lying there in bed listening to the loose staysail beating in the raging storm, I felt like I was in paradise when no one came to my door and yelled, “Turn out as you are; all hands on deck!” Don’t think about going to sea, Ludvig; let that idea always frighten you. When silly, young boys who have taken a sailing trip over here and have barely set their feet on shore again go off and buy themselves sailors’ hats and play at being sailors, don’t let them persuade you; they don’t know any more about going to sea than you do. I hope you will follow my advice, for then you will be doing your parents and siblings a favor, and most of all doing yourself a favor. I hear that Torkildsen and Marius have joined the Navy, and it’s nice that several people I know are coming. It is cold at night here now, and we are not used to that since we just came up from the warm weather in the south. There are many Norwegians here, so when the boat docks, we meet older and younger people who speak Norwegian to us. They tell us how long they have been in America and where they come from. There are quite a lot of Norwegian sailors who sail up and down the coast here. I don’t have any more to say now until we get to the other side of the Atlantic. We don’t make such a big deal of sailing to America as some do. Now we are on our way to Ponta Delgada, Azores. In closing, I hope that Mother, Selma, and all who are sick there at home will get better soon. From your son,

Steam gunboat Ellida
Address: Brest, France

Greet Grandfather, and let me know if Severin and J. Berg are at home.