your well-being here, and everlasting happiness in that never-ending state of bliss, where I hope and trust we shall all, through the merits of the Redeemer, have a joyful meeting. My dear uncle, your dutiful nephew and most
This letter I believe to have been addressed to Moses Fontaine, it was without address, but endorsed in the hand-writing of Moses Fontaine. Received 23d September, 1757, answered 21st February, 1758.
Rock Castle, Hanover, Virginia, June 9, 1760.
Dear Sir:—It is so long since I have had the pleasure to receive a letter from you, that I am afraid something has happened on your part to prevent it, and yet I acknowledge you have seeming reason to doubt, to suspect my sincerity, when I tell you so, as I have been so long, so very long silent myself. But I am persuaded that you will make all possible allowance for a person who has had so much business on his hands, as I have had since I last wrote to you. The death of my dear father; the business of his whole concerns falling into my hands, my own removal from Halifax and settling in Hanover, the late dismal prospect of our public affairs, with the almost continual sickliness of my own family, and the death of two dear children, and last of all, my having discontinued to ship tobacco home, which used to act as the monitor as well as offer opportunities of writing to you and my other friends on your side; these, dear sir, have been the principal impediments in my way.
