At the time this letter was written, Nahum Capen (1804-1886) was the corresponding secretary of the Boston Phrenological Society which he had helped to establish after the death of J. G. Spurzheim. He was also a member of Marsh, Capen and Lyon, a prominent publishing house of phrenological works, and wrote Reminiscences of Dr. Spurzheim and George Combe (1881), a historical survey of the first years of the phrenological movement. Nahum Capen had a wide correspondence with other devotees of phrenology in the United States and abroad; this letter from M.A.H. Niles, a member of the faculty of St. Stanislaus College in Indiana, shows the appeal of phrenology to the general public. For a transcription of this letter, please see
here.