University of Virginia Library

LETTER XXXIV.

Your letter reached me yesterday, but I find myself
too much disordered to do more than thank you for it. I am
very sorry that your socks were omitted. The readiest way
to supply the defect will be to take mine, which you will
find in the upper drawer of my desk, and I will procure
others in their room. They are almost new. With respect
to the military school, about to be established in Farmville, I
should like to know something of its professors before I
would consent to your becoming a pupil, even if I approved
the institution, which I do not. I therefore hope that you

will curb your military spirit for the present. If ever you
are attached to an army, I hope it will be in the capacity of
a surgeon—a curer, not an inflictor of wounds.

Farewell, my dear boy. My love to your sister, your
cousin, and Tudor. I am not positively sick; but weak, giddy,
and what is worse (I fear) low-spirited. For this last
disease there is unfortunately neither physician nor medicine.