BakerOliver18320228_001

Andover Feb. 28. 1832

Dear Brother

I received your letter Dated Feb. 8 - Brother Champion told
me he had also received a letter from you a day or two since. You
are not aware I presume that sometimes your chirography is scarcely
legible. One or two sentences have failed all my attempts at making out
what it is. I conclude you got in a hurry just before you quit, and had
forgot that you were putting down stenographic characters. I shall be obliged
to empmloy some "Champolion" to read you if you dont take care.
You will not be uninterested I presume to learn that I have overtaken
the class in the Hebrew I shall not however be examined immediately
I have to debate in one week on the question whether abstaining
from the use and trafic in ardent spirits ought to be a condition
of admission into the church. I have been reading Stewarts prize
essay about the uses which the Hebrews made of wine, strong drink, and
mixed wines, but from it I dont find a foundation, a philosophical
basis, on which I can build a natural well proportioned superstructure
with it. We meet on Sabbath morning of every week to remember
our Alma dicter Yale College, and last Sabbath was read a letter from
the church in Y. College stating that two hundred and seventy of the
students had joined the temperance society and there was some interest in
religion. I want to be back there. I dont find talent here
there there is in Newhaven. Prof. Fitch and Tailor will weigh down
all the Andover professors. When I think how hard you have toiled to
get through college I am disposed to [?] you on being in a condition
to pay your debts and square up with the world. Hope you will not
think of quitting Snow Hill at the end of the year. It was the unfortunate
link in my fortune to quit my school and be on expense
so long before I could get another. I called at Madison when I came
through Ct. and saw them. They complain of [Petempel?] some and wish
I were back there. They might then have treated me a little differently and
I would have stayed with them. But I am glad that I went to the west
Can you believe it Brother Otis I am a hundred and fifty dollars yet, more
than that, in debt, now. The interest money ate me up. I owe only
one debt in New Haven - about Sixty dollars to the college. Hope it
will be the will of Providence that I live till I can see all my creditors
paid. I feel a sort of gratitude to men who are willing to trust me
I have thought much of the wonderful fact that you and myself
have never asked or received the loan of a dollar from one of our
relatives and yet we have received the "gradus Baccalaureatus"
at the first institution in our country. Let it not inflate our
pride but may the consideration make us humble that [?]
with the hindrances which we had to our rise in the world we have
stepped up altogether another height of intellectual elevation
I sometimes compare my own superior means of enjoyment with that of Augustus
Jones [?] French and H. Alden simply because I have learned the value
of books - have, to say the least some idea of what belongs to the investigation
of subjects &c. But I dont feel above them. If I could I would convince
them that. I do not. In one sense however I do value myself their superiors
I cannot relish their pleasures, horse swapping &c.

I have just thought that Mr
Salter had five dollars or some thing like that sum charged to me - articles which I had
not had and he wished me to tell you that they should have been included in your bill