 Make sure that first of all you can pretty much understand what the person is saying and if there are things that don't quite make sense I think the important thing to realize is that's probably a good thing not a bad thing It's an interesting it probably means the person is saying something a little surprising and unusual And that's usually a good thing to write about so one of the things I always tell my students is if something doesn't make sense they should not panic It's not them it may actually be that they've got a good historical problem to write about so if there are things that Make you uncomfortable or surprise you or don't make sense Those are the things to go back and focus in on look at them more carefully see if there are Contradictions maybe the person who's writing is living with contradictions so we don't necessarily live with today Maybe they're living with contradictions we do live with today But to go back and look at that closely make sure you really understand that whether it's say a critique of the anti-slavery Movement or a discussion of women's rights Whatever you find so in addition to just looking very closely at the textual material When you look at these letters you want to think What is the nature of this exchange? Are you writing home to your mom? Do you want your mom maybe not to be worried about you because you're off at the factory are you writing home? Because you need help I mean that kind of personal letter is going to set up one set of Conventions of the kinds of things you say and all you have to think about is the things you say or don't say to Your mom and dad today to realize that was probably true back in the 19th century too So you want to ask that certainly if you're writing a formal letter to someone? You don't know to say and ask them to come and address your organization that letter might not contain Much interesting information one way or the other it's certainly going to be a very formal letter And you shouldn't be surprised if some kinds of emotional expression expressions don't show up This kind of letter here is somewhere in between because Angelique Martin has clearly befriended Sarah and some of her friends on the other hand. It's a professional relationship Mrs. Martin is an important social reformer. She clearly is a woman of some means She's offered to help them pay for their printing press for the voice of industry They're hoping that she will do that They have an important intellectual relationship because she's been introducing them to ideas about women's rights And they've talked pretty passionately about some of these issues So Sarah regards her as a friend in a way that she probably doesn't regard her sister as a friend But she also regards her as a kind of mentor and as someone who has in some way some power over her She wants to impress her But she's also going to talk about the issues that they care about together such as women's rights But when she talks about women's rights, she's going to talk passionately about it So I think there is a sort of a way in which you need to think about what the relationship is between these two people And we can certainly see from the letters that there are a lot of complications in this relationship that are going to I don't want to say necessarily shape what gets said, but they're going to put constraints or They're going to dictate a little bit how things get said and I think that's always an important thing to keep in mind