I was at Mr. Pool’s a few days since and saw the colts gallop. They appear to be doing finely. Pool makes some considerable calculations on the black colt and Major Donelson’s horse Mombrino. He feels very confident of taking the four-mile day with him this fall. He has made a little brush with him and a horse of Squire Robertson’s that was trained with Anville last season and his heels is nothing to Mombrino. Robertson’s horse was faster a little ways than Anville’s. As respects health, the people generally are sickly. Some sickness amongst us, but nothing serious I believe. Aaron the blacksmith and Tom Franklin was both taken sick yesterday; very hot fever all night. I gave them a large dose of calomel and jalap this morning and they are much better to-night. I have nothing pleasing to write you about the house. Nothing much adoing. Two hands at work. I believe the brickwork to the wings not quite finished. The principal building is covered, and that is all I can say. Col. Armstrong and Col. Love is both doing their best with the firm I believe. I think Rieff needs an overseer. Hobbs’s gloomy forebodings about the cotton crop were discounted by Colonel Armstrong in a letter to Jackson in which he said: “I expect that you have not had so large and so good a crop for several years”; but within a few weeks an unseasonably early frost had destroyed these sanguine expectations and in November Colonel Armstrong was writing sadly: “Some plantations will make half a crop, some a third. I am sorry to say that yours is very near a loss.” This crop failure, coming right in the midst of the heavy expense occasioned by the burning of the Hermitage and most of its furniture, filled Jackson with misgivings, and he promptly wrote to Andrew urging him to exercise economy in the management of the farm and suggesting that one or two of the three-year-old stud colts might be bartered for work mares in order to avoid the necessity for a cash outlay for the mares. At the end of the year Mr. Hobbs was reëngaged to serve during 1836, but it was not long before the reports received from the farm convinced the General that proper attention was not being given the livestock. His keen insight into what was going on a thousand miles away from him is strikingly shown in a letter he wrote Andrew in March: My son: I inclose you a letter received to-day from Mr. Hobbs from which I infer he pays but little attention to the stock.