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LETTER TWO
23

to ask you for further assistance; but I hope a time will come when I shall have it in my power to prove my gratitude.

In the first place, as I must have a certificate of my being of good character, to procure a free passage, I want Maria to obtain signatures to it. The persons whom I have selected as the best to sign it are: Rev. George Cheatle, minister of Lombard-street chapel; Mr. B. Hudson, bookseller. Bull-street; Mr. R. Matthison, stationer, Edgbaston-street; and Mr. Pickard, ironmonger, Bull-street. I am not very well known to any of these, least of all to Mr. Cheatle; but the certificate must be signed by a clergyman or minister, and he is the only person of that class who can know anything of me, from living in his own neighbourhood and being with Mr. Houldin, a near neighbour of his, so long, and my brother George and his wife attending his chapel. I think he must know enough of me to justify him in signing a paper of no more consequence. I have written a letter to him, which you will deliver, and allow him to read before you ask him for his signature. All I know of Mr. Pickard is having sold him goods, which I got up in Birmingham, and bought of him. My knowledge of Mr. Hudson, and his of me, is