The post brought me letters from London which made it necessary at once to write replies, and kept me busy. In the evening Henry came down so that we had the mails from America. The political and military news is not important. But there is a great variety of questions opened in the Despatches, which gave me much to think of. Indeed this very last week at this place differs from its predecessors in the great increase of care, which has not burdened me heretofore. There is a man by the name of Richmond who has thought fit to fall into bad company and got tried and convicted of a criminal offence. His friends in Roxbury are all up in arms about it, and have sent me a heap of letters urging me to get him out. What can I do? I could not help thinking of Mr Hawthorn’s anecdote in his book, of the Doctor of Divinity in Liverpool who lost his sanctity so suddenly on reaching this country.