children without exception. Excuse errors, for I am writing by candle-light and cannot see the lines and have not time to make corrections. I am my dear sister,
Mrs. Polly Sullivan, Lexington, Lafayette Co., Ky.
I will write to-morrow night to Brother Andrew."
My Dear Sir.
Being fully sensible of the painful shock which the contents of my last letter would necessarily inflict on the already lacerated feelings of Mrs. White and yourself, I have delayed all further communication on the melancholy subject until now, hoping that time in the interim, in some small degree at least, would so much assuage and mitigate our common sorrow, as to enable me to write more calmly, and you and the faithful sharer of all your joys and sorrows to receive the farther relations which I feel it my duty to make concerning the death of your beloved kinsman, in a spirit of greater resignation than you could have commanded while the unexpected event was so fresh, and overwhelming in its natural effects on the mind of affectionate children. I say children, because Mr. McClure loved you in all the fullness of affection of a father for a son. No man ever loved more ardently, sincerely and impartially than he did every member of his family. Without objects on whom he could constantly lavish the affections of a heart made up of love and universal charity, the world would have been to him a dreary wilderness, and life itself a meaningless blank. But to those who knew him, as you have known him, I need not say a word as to the goodness and purity of his heart, or of his kind and affectionate disposition.
My chief object in writing, is to inform you and his children, as truly as I can, of a few details relating to his last days and hours which I was incapable of setting down in any sort of order when I wrote to you last. Although Mr.
