That is all your hope here, and to be very obliging and condescending to those who are disposed to employ you....
"I think young Leslie is a very estimable young man to be, as I am told he is, supporting himself and assisting his widowed mother by his industry." I shall anticipate a little in order to give at once the son's answer to this reproof.

He writes on April 28, 1815:-- "I wish I could persuade my parents that they might place some little confidence in my judgment at the age I now am (nearly twenty-four), an age when, in ordinary people, the judgment has reached a certain degree of maturity.

It is a singular and, I think, an unfortunate fact that I have not, that I recollect, since I have been in England, had a turn of low spirits except when I have received letters from home.

It is true I find a great deal of affectionate solicitude in them, but with it I also find so much complaint and distrust, so much fear that I am doing wrong, so much doubt as to my morals and principles, and fear lest I should be led away by bad company and the like, that, after I have read them, I am miserable for a week.

I feel as though I had been guilty of every crime, and I have passed many sleepless nights after receiving letters from you.
I shall not sleep to-night in consequence of passages in your letters just received." Here he quotes from his mother's letter and answers: "Now as to the young man's living for six hundred dollars, I know who it is of whom you speak.