l to add, however, that the pleasure is greatly enhanced by
the knowledge that I owe the occasion of it to your suggestion.

I hope to visit Boston this winter, or early in the spring. I often feel
as if I had a burden of questions which I wish to propose to you for
conversation. The want of this resource and satisfaction is one of the
principal reasons that make me regret my distance from Boston. I shall
always remember the weeks I spent with you, two years ago, with more
interest than I shall ever feel it proper to express to you. It is
one of my most joyful hopes of heaven, that such intercourse shall be
renewed, and exalted and perpetuated forever.

To the Same.

NEW BEDFORD, Sept. 21, 1824.

DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your letter and invitation [See p. 50]
. . . . The result of your going to Boston is what I [134] feared, and
it seems too nearly settled that nothing will give you health, but a
different mind, or a different mode of life.

Quintilian advises the orator to retire before he is spent, and says
that he can still advance the object of his more active and laborious
pursuits by conversing, by publishing, and by teaching others, youths,
to follow in his steps. I do not quote this advice to recommend it, if
it were proper for me to recommend anything. But I have often revolved
the courses that might preserve your life, and make it at once happy to
yourself and useful to us, for many years to come. I cannot admit any
plan that would dismiss you altogether from the pulpit, nor do I believe
that any such could favor your happiness or your health. But could you
not limit yourself to preaching, say ten times in a year (provided one
of them be in New Bedford)? and will you permit me to ask, nor question
my modesty in doing so, if you could not spend a part of the year in a
leisurely preparation of something for the press? I fear that your
MSS., and I mean your sermons now, would suffer by any other revisal
and publication than your own. With regard to the last suggestion of
Quintilian's, I have supposed that it has been fairly before you; but
perhaps I have already said more than becomes me. If so, I am confident
at least that I deserve your pardon for my good intentions; and with
these, I am, dear sir, most truly as well as

Respectfully your friend,

O. DEWEY.

I am tempted to introduce here a sketch of my father as he appeared
in those early days, writ-en by Rev. W. H. Channing, for "the London
Enquir