It is now nearly six weeks that the snow has almost constantly been driven, like dry sand, by the fierce winds of Kansas. By means of the sale of our horse and wagon, our present wants are tolerably well met; so that, if health is continued to us, we shall not probably suffer much.... Thermometer on Sunday and Monday at twenty-eight to twenty-nine below zero. Ice in the river, in the timber, and under the snow, eighteen inches thick this week.... Jason down again with the ague, but he was some better yesterday. Oliver was also laid up by freezing his toes,--one great toe so badly frozen that the nail has come off. He will be crippled for some days yet. Owen has one foot frozen. We have middling tough times (as some would call them) but have enough to eat, and abundant reason for the most unfeigned gratitude....[110] These were hard conditions. It would be difficult to imagine circumstances of greater discomfort and hopelessness. But what about the future--the future for himself and for the wife and the daughters depending upon him for the necessaries of life, for whose benefit he had come to Kansas? Did Brown think of them? Present inconvenience and privation may be borne with fortitude if the future holds out a promise of betterment. In his case we may reasonably assume that the problems of the future, rather than the present conditions and discouragements, engrossed his thoughts. It is altogether unreasonable to suppose that this unscrupulous man of affairs--this restless, aggressive speculator--sat listlessly, amid his environment of discomfort and poverty, and permitted the dreary months to pass without thinking of his precarious financial condition, and of the incessantly urgent family responsibilities impending; and of the possibilities of bettering his fortunes in the immediate future. His biographers have wisely avoided discussion of the practical side of Brown's condition at this time, preferring to wander in more intangible fields, and to speculate upon the emotional and metaphysical phenomena they seek to involve in the situation. The record of his life at this time, however, reveals the fact that Brown did think of the future and of its responsibilities; and that he did mature a plan to better his financial condition. Also, that his plan was in harmony with his latest and best biographer's estimate of his character: "It was not only that he was visionary as a business man,"[111] says Mr. Villard, "but that he developed the fatal tendency to speculate; doubtless the outgrowth of his restlessness, and the usual desire of the bankrupt for a sudden coup to restore his fortune," To his wife he wrote as follows: Brown's Station, K. T., April 7, 1856.