University of Virginia Library

TO WILLIAM BRADFORD, JR.

Dear B.,—I received your letter dated March the
1st about a week ago; and it is not more to obey
your demands than to fulfil my own desires that I
give you this early answer. I am glad you disclaim
all punctiliousness in our correspondence. For my
own part I confess I have not the face to perform
ceremony in person, and I equally detest it on paper;
though as Tully says, It cannot blush. Friendship,
like all truth, delights in plainness and simplicity, and
it is the counterfeit alone that needs ornament and

ostentation. I am so thoroughly persuaded of this,
that when I observe any one over complaisant to me
in his professions and promises, I am tempted to interpret
his language thus: "As I have no real esteem
for you, and for certain reasons think it expedient to
appear well in your eye, I endeavor to varnish falsehood
with politeness, which I think I can do in so
ingenious a manner that so vain a blockhead as you
cannot see through it."

I would have you write to me when you feel as you
used to do, when we were under the same roof, and
you found it a recreation and release from business
and books to come and chat an hour or two with me.
The case is such with me that I am too remote from
the post to have the same choice, but it seldom happens
that an opportunity catches me out of a humor
of writing to my old Nassovian friends, and you know
what place you hold among them.

I have not seen a single piece against the Doctor's
address. I saw a piece advertised for publication in
the Philadelphia Gazette, entitled "Candid remarks,"
&c., and that is all I know about it. These things
seldom reach Virginia, and when they do, I am out of
the way of them. I have a curiosity to read those
authors who write with "all the rage of impotence,"
not because there is any excellence or wit in their
writings, but because they implicitly proclaim the
merit of those they are railing against, and give them
an occasion of shewing by their silence and contempt
that they are invulnerable. I am heartily obliged to
you for your kind offer of sending me some of these
performances. I should also willingly accept Freneau's

works, and the "Sermons to Doctors in Divinity,"
which I hear are published, and whatever else you
reckon worth reading. Please to note the cost of the
articles, for I will by no means suffer our acquaintance
to be an expense on your part alone, and I have
nothing fit to send you to make it reciprocal. In your
next letter be more particular as to yourself, your intentions,
present employments, &c., Erwin, McPherson,
&c., the affairs of the college. Is the lottery
like to come to anything? There has happened no
change in my purposes since you heard from me last.
My health is a little better, owing, I believe, to more
activity and less study, recommended by physicians.
I shall try, if possible, to devise some business that
will afford me a sight of you once more in Philadelphia
within a year or two. I wish you would resolve
the same with respect to me in Virginia, though within
a shorter time. I am sorry my situation affords me
nothing new, curious, or entertaining, to pay you for
your agreeable information and remarks. You, being
at the fountain head of political and literary intelligence,
and I in an obscure corner, you must expect to
be greatly loser on that score by our correspondence.
But as you have entered upon it, I am determined to
hold you to it, and shall give you some very severe
admonitions whenever I perceive a remissness or
brevity in your letters. I do not intend this as a
beginning of reproof, but as a caution to you never to
make it necessary at all.

If Mr. Horton is in Philadelphia, give him my best
thanks for his kindness in assisting Mr. Wallace to do
some business for [......?] not long ago.

I must re-echo your pressing invitation to [......?]
do with the more confidence as I have complied.