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United Service Club

3 July 1844

My dear William,

I have this day received a Letter from James
for which pray say that I am very thankful to him. It was
written on a Sunday from Camden, and as he says and truly
I ought not to expect that he would write to me more than
incidentally on such a day on subjects of Business. However
I must observe that something seems always to prevent every
explicit and distinct Statement being made, and this a good
system might surely effect by a few simple cyphers which save
much rhetoric and a multitude of words.

In the storm which has assailed the Colony I can well believe
the anxious moments, in the aggregate amounting to days and
entire weeks, which have been your most painful Lot, and how
few leisure hours you have really had. I am willing therefore to
make ample allowance on this Head. Remember, however, how
much anxiety I might have been spared had my entreaties
on this Head met with some little compliance.

The entire absorption of your attention by other matters is
clearly indicated by your never having said one word respecting
the last Party of Germans, whom I sent to you and into the
Details of whose equipment, and also into your own particular
requests in relation to them, I entered with minuteness of detail
and attention to the spirit of the undertaking, to the full
extent of my means and ability. Our dear Mother said they
had arrived, but whether with satisfaction to yourself or not –
whether the Vines had perished – whether the Cooper and his Tools
were such as you had hoped for or not – of these things I