with a beloved friend. But it is a memorandum that I think we ought always to carry about us, that friends, the best of our worldly enjoyments, are liable to be taken from us every moment, or if not, we ourselves must some time or other be taken from them; so that we ought to stand always prepared for the painful divorce, and not set our affections on the good things of this world, which are only intended by our good God as comforts and refreshments in our pilgrimage upon the journey to that other world, which is our proper home. May God grant; my dear uncle, that all of us may so run this short race, as that we may reap those joys which have no bitterness, and no bounds, in that everlasting world, to which you, that are seventy odd, and I that am forty odd, are equally hastening, and in which you only have a little the start; where I hope we shall not only be better acquainted with each other, know personally, and converse by word of mouth, and have no dangerous ocean of three thousand miles between us. But the very essence of all joy will be, that we shall know the Great Father of all our blessings and enjoyments, whom to know is eternal life.
As to public affairs here, we seem to have room to flatter ourselves that our cruel enemies the Indians, are, from some motive, more peaceably disposed towards us than formerly. And yet things wear but a gloomy aspect, for the country is so excessively poor, that even the industrious, frugal man can scarcely live, and the least slip in economy would be fatal. There is no money but the small remains of our paper currency, which is almost all returned to and burnt in the Treasury; and in the midst of this our poverty, our mother country, which seems to have contracted a dislike to some of our proceedings, is laying a tax (the forerunner we fear of
