LETTER LXXII.
Roanoke, Oct. 6, 1811.
Sunday.
Dear Theodore,
Your two letters, of the 23d and 30th of September,
have just now reached me. I awaited the arrival of the
post, in the expectation of hearing from you, with feelings
which you will be at no loss to comprehend, because you
have so well described them. Let me beg of you, my son,
to dismiss all anxiety on my account. I wish I could as readily
relieve all your other cares; but, therein, "the patient
must minister to himself." I have been very unwell, but
am now, thanks be to God! quite restored to my usual
health. I have never failed to write to you by every post;
if my letters have not come to hand, the fault is to be laid
to the door of the post-office. Take care of yourself, my
dear fellow; if not for your own, at least for my sake.
Struggle against desponding and low spirits, and endeavour
to cultivate and to cherish a cheerful, or, at least, a serene,
habit of mind. This is more in our power than we are in
general aware of: especially in early life. It is only when
the opposite, or any other ill habit, is formed and fastened
upon us, by that tyrant custom, that we see and feel, and
fruitlessly bewail our error. I am shocked, and should be
surprised, if any thing could surprise me that man can do,
at the gross and cruel injustice done to the memory and family
of our excellent friend, by his late employers: but it
is not among money lenders, and, especially, monied corporations,
that I should look for delicacy, feeling, or liberality;
much less for justice. There is in all the combinations of
nature and art, nothing so hard and callous as a trading company,
of whatever description. They look to the dividend;
to the profit and loss account of the leger; and, whether
their gain flow from the blood of a Hindoo, or African;
from the ruined reputation of an honest and amiable man, or
the tears of his widowed companion and orphan offspring,
it is all one to these
worthy personages. I had feared that
the generous temper of our friend had disabled him from
making a secure and permanent provision for his family. It
was
therefore, that I directed my inquiries to that point.
Mrs. Clay (to whom I have not
yet the heart to write) will
not, I hope, deny me the melancholy privilege of considering
Randolph as my own son. I intend, with her permission,
to take upon myself the charge of his education and
advancement in life. Could I do a thousand times more, his
father had deserved it all richly at my hands. Do let her
know this through Mr. Croskey, or in any other way which
your own delicate and manly spirit may suggest.
I was aware that your finances must have been straitened,
and, therefore, I wished to know how they stood, that I
might make the speediest and most efficient provision on
that head. This, you say, is "a delicate subject:" true, it is
so, in general, but not between you and myself, my dear son.
Take care of your heart. Pity is a-kin to Love. Grief prepares
the affections for the sway of that seducing tyrant.
The ladies of Philadelphia are fair and alluring, and your
time of life is most propitious to their power over your heart.
In the language of your profession, there is in every young
man of a just and honourable way of thinking, of refined
and elevated notions, a strong predisposition to this universal
disease, which, like some others, all of us must have once
in our lives. If the case be desperate, make me your confidant,
if you can: I will endeavour to prove myself not
unworthy of the trust. But I protest against extorted confidence
and forced prayers. I, too, have been young, and
know how to make allowance, I trust, for the noblest infirmity
of our nature; which none but the young, or those who
have not forgotten the feelings of their youth, can duly estimate.
I shall go on early to Washington, and do not wish you
to come on there until you hear of me from thence. Again,
take care of yourself. As soon as I get to Richmond (if not
sooner) I shall make you a remittance. I would not have
had you put even the semblance of slight upon the memory
of our dear friend, for the wealth of Crœsus.
Farewell, my dear Theodore: for such you are, and ever
will be, to
Your friend,
JOHN RANDOLPH, of Roanoke.
Mr. Theodorick Bland Dudley.
Carter greets you cordially: so does Beverley. Henry
Tucker has lost his youngest child: so has Mr. William Watkins.
All well at Bizarre, yesterday.
I sent you $40 by the last post; or, rather, the penultimate,
which, I presume, you have received: $20 and $150
before; that is, since we parted in Baltimore. I state this,
to avoid mistake. Mr. Garnett, speaking of Mr. Clay's
death, says—"I feared until I heard from you," (a misapprehension
of a passage of my letter,) "of Dr. Brockenbrough's
being with him, that those Philadelphia Sangrados
had killed him. Poor fellow, he always appeared to me too
fond of their most absurd and most fatal system, of taking
all the blood out of a man's body by way of prolonging his
life.
[1]
He lived long enough for his own fame, but the loss
of such a man, at any period, must be considered both as a
public and a private calamity."
