"I am fearful, my son, that you think a great deal more of your amusements than your studies, and there lies the difficulty, and the same difficulty would exist were you in college.
"You have filled your letter with requests to go into college and an account of a gunning party, both of which have given us pain. I am truly sorry that you appear so unsteady as by your own account you are….
"You mention in the letter you wrote first that, if you went into college, you and your chum would want brandy and wine and segars in your room. Pray is that the custom among the students? We think it a very improper one, indeed, and hope the government of college will not permit it. There is no propriety at all in such young boys as you having anything to do with anything of the kind, and your papa and myself positively prohibit you the use of these things till we think them more necessary than we do at present….
"You will remember that you have promised in your first letter to be an economist. In your last letter you seem to have forgotten all about it. Pray, what do your gunning parties cost you for powder and shot? I beg you to consider and not go driving on from one foolish whim to another till you provoke us to withdraw from you the means of gratifying you in anything that may be even less objectionable than gunning."
These exhortations seem to have had, temporarily, at least, the desired effect, for in a letter to his parents dated December 18, 1805, young Morse says: "I shall not go out to gun any more, for I know it makes you anxious about me."
The letters of the parents to the son are full of pious exhortations, and good advice, and reproaches to the boy for not writing oftener and more at length, and for not answering every question asked by the parents. It is comforting to the present-day parent to learn that human nature was much the same in those pious days of old, differing only in degree, and that there is hope for the most wayward son and careless correspondent.
The following letters from the elder Morse I shall include as being of rather more than ordinary interest, and as showing the breadth of his activity.
CHARLESTOWN, December 23, 1806.
To THE BISHOP OP LONDON,
REV'D AND RESPECTED SIR,—I presume that it might be agreeable to you to know the precise state of the property which originally belonged to the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia.
I have with some pains obtained the law of that State respecting this singular business.