Our anxiety for you, in your present circumstances and situation among strangers, (though we doubt not you have many friends,) has prevailed upon me to make a great sacrifice, in consenting to your mother's journey to Long Island.

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I am kindly obliged to Col. Smith and to you, for your many invitations, and I have a great desire to see you, your friends, and even your situation. But, as long as this political squall shall last, I can scarcely lie asleep, or sit still, without censure, much less ride journeys on visits to my friends.

If my future employment in public depends on a journey to New-York, or on the feather of being for a week or a day President of Congress, I will never have any other than private employments while I live. I am willing to serve the public on manly conditions, but not on childish ones; on honourable principles, not mean ones.

It is the opinion of good judges, in which I fully concur with them, that there will be no Congress till February; nor then, but merely to declare the old Government dissolved, and the new one in exercise; so that there will be no occasion for me to go.1

I find men and manners, principles and opinions, much altered in this country, since I left it. Gen. Knox will tell you, when you see him, how completely I am initiated in the order of Cincinnatus, without any vote of the Society. He has obliged me by two short visits, and is the same sensible and agreeable man as when I formerly knew him.

I am, my dear daughter, with much affection, / Yours,

I was much obliged to you for a letter by Mr. Nesbit of Philadelphia, and am very sorry I could not have more of his company.1 He was much esteemed, I find, in Boston.

I wished for you, when he was here, because you could never have a better opportunity of seeing your old military friends. We had a review of the militia, upon my farm; and a battle that threw down all my fences. I wish, however, that Governor Hancock and General Lincoln would not erect their military reputations upon the ruins of my stone walls. Methinks I hear you whisper, it won't be long ere they erect their civil and political characters upon some other of your ruins. If they do, I shall acquiesce, for the public good: Lincoln I esteem very much: the other, I respect as my governor.

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You have many friends here, who constantly inquire after your health and happiness. They all would be glad to see you, but none of them so sincerely rejoiced, as your affectionate,