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Maria Templeton

New York November 25 [?]

Your letter my dear Margaret was truly a charming one, it almost gave
me a place at your tea-table, a view of the boat where you delivered your
astronomical lecture, and of the interesting female towards you felt so much
disposed to act the Philanthropist. Your pen is well adapted to describe these
scenes in which you are enjoyed, they are rendered more interesting by detail. Con-
tinue to give them to me in this way my dear Margaret, they will gratify me
because told by you, they will add to, or rather they will support to its usual
elevation the spirit of friendship, and if you will still allow me the invaluable
priviledge of commenting on your actions, and pointing out objections where they do
not exactly accord with my ideas of right, and propriety. I think your relations will be
highly useful to us both, to me, by increasing my knowledge of the world, and be
ing almost as advantageous as a visit to Washington and perhaps to you, my
dear Margaret, by showing you how those actions, to which you might be prompted
more by the momentary impulse of feeling than the calm dictate of judgment
appear to one who though a cool observer, yet enters fully, and zealously into
every concern in which your excellent heart finds itself interested.

Say, dear Margaret, can you allow your noblest actions to be discussed, as if
they had been better left undone, till you had first called on other powers
besides generosity: your best feelings questioned; as if they were more
guided by an ardent imagination than by a sound, deliberating judgment.
Say, can you feel sufficient confidence in me to believe that I am actuated
by the pure spirit of friendship, a friendship sincere, strong, and hitherto
undeviating, which makes me not merely contented with receiving pleasure
from your recitals, and, bestowing general commendation on return, but
which leads me to discriminate between your motives to action, and your actions
themselves, and while I acknowledge the former to be praise worthy, think the
latter might sometimes involve you in painful embarrassment. which
might be avoided by a greater degree of prudence, without obliging you to relinquish
your benevolent designs. Say with sincerity, dear friend, from that hea[rt]
which I know to be one of the best in the world if I sometimes ass[...]
censor, will you continue to unfold all your pl[?] [...]
have been doing, with the utmost freedom und[...]
inviting animadversion certain that it will come from [...]

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