The letter, my dear Theo., which (I have no doubt) you wrote me last Sunday, has not yet come to hand. Am I to blame Strong? or the postmaster? or whom?
When you have finished a letter, read it carefully over, and correct all the errors you can discover. In your last there were some which could not, upon an attentive perusal, have escaped your notice, as you shall see when we meet.
I have asked you a great many questions, to which I have as yet no answers. When you sit down to write to me, or when you set about it, be it sitting or standing, peruse all my letters, and leave nothing unanswered. Adieu.
A. BURR.
TO HIS DAUGHTER THEODOSIA.
Philadelphia, 31st December, 1793.
I received your letter and journal yesterday in the Senate Chamber, just before the closing of the mail, so that I had only time to acknowledge it by a hasty line. You see I never let your letters remain a day unanswered, in which I wish you would imitate me. Your last had no date; from the last date in the journal, and your writing about Christmas holydays as yet at some distance, I suppose you wrote about Sunday the 22d. Nine days ago! I beg you again to read over all my letters, and to let me see by your answers that you attend to them. I suspect your last journal was not written from day to day; but all on one, or at most two days, from memory. How is this? Ten or fifteen minutes every evening would not be an unreasonable sacrifice from you to me. If you took the Christmas holydays, I assent: if you did not, we cannot recall the time. This is all the answer which that part of your letter now admits of.
It is said that some few yet die of the yellow fever which lately raged here; but the disorder does not appear to be, at present, in any degree contagious; what may be the case upon the return of warm weather, is a subject of anxious conjecture and apprehension. It is probable that the session of Congress will continue into the summer.
Give a place to your mamma's health in your journal. Omit the formal conclusion of your letters, and write your name in a larger hand. I am just going to Senate, where I hope to meet a letter from you, with a continuation of your journal down to the 29th inclusive, which, if it gives a good account of you and mamma, will gladden the heart of