University of Virginia Library

LETTER V.

Your letter (the first that I have received for three
posts) has relieved me from very great concern and uneasiness
on your account. Your reason for failing to write, was
altogether insufficient. Compare, I beseech you, my son,
the trouble which it would give you to send me a few short
lines, with my suspense and anxiety lest you should be ill,
or some disastrous accident have befallen you, and I am sure
you will confess, that the loss, or miscarriage, of one of your
letters, or the trouble of composing it, is nothing in comparison.
Send your next by the New Orleans mail, or write
by the Genito post, and I shall receive an early answer to
this. Attend, I beg of you, my son, to your books. In a
short time, I hope to see you; but let not this expectation
stop your pen.