ritten; for it
seemed like tearing open my heart. But the ardent desire that the
virtues of my husband should not die out as his name has done, and the
fear that, as one by one of those who knew and loved him, should be
laid in the grave, and the bare fact that he was murdered only remain,
a blush might tinge your cheeks, at the mention of his name, lest the
ancestor, who thus fell, might by his evil deeds have provoked his
untimely end. I have often felt, too, while penning these letters, it
is useless; my grandchildren will perhaps never even take the pains to
read them, and if read they may not be impressed by them or stimulated
to a single effort, to imitate the being I so much love and admire, and
whose blood still flows in their own veins.

One of the few friends to whom I communicated my intention to
write this sketch, and for whose opinion I have a high regard, wrote me
as follows:

"Do not suffer yourself to forget that when your grandchildren
shall have become old enough to understand what you write, the present
and the future will be the object of their interest, not the past and
the dead. They will be unlike humanity, if they take any interest, in
what so much interests you. I very much fear that your labors will
wholly fail of accomplishing the good your earnest and loving heart
intends."

In the same letter he also expresses a fear that it will be
impossible for me to make any attempt of the kind which will not be a
very partial one. In reference to this, he says:

"The memory comes insensibly to dwell on all that was agreeable,
and to intensify it; impartiality ceases; and the almost certain result
is, a picture which all who read it, having known the object, see to be
colored by the hand of love."

If I had not already written twelve or thirteen letters before
this damper to my efforts came to hand; I do not know that I would have
had the courage to proceed, and I am now gratified to see, in
reperusing the letters of condolence which we received after the death
of your grandfather, that they, no less than the public manifestations
of the community where he lived and died, corroborate what I have said
in relation to him. Of the forty-seven letters received from friends,
from every part of the country, there is but one opinion. All speak of
him as an uncommon man, whose loss is irreparable. I will copy a few
extracts from these letters, scarcely knowing, however, which to
select, so full the