LETTER V.
ROANOKE, June 2d, 1813.
I did not receive your letter of the 26th until last evening, and then I was obliged for it to my good old neighbor Col. Morton, who never omits an occasion of doing a favor however small. The gentleman by whom you wrote is very shy of me, nor can I blame him for it: no man likes to feel the embarrassment which a consciousness of having done wrong to another is sure to inspire, and which the sight of the object towards whom the wrong has been done never fails to excite in the most lively and painful degree. My neighbor Col. C., who goes down to Petersburg and Richmond tomorrow, enables me to answer (after a fashion) your question—“how and where I shall pass the summer months?” To which I can only reply—as it pleases God! If I go to any watering place it will be to our Hot Springs, for the purpose of stewing the rheumatism out of my carcase, if it be practicable.
It would have been peculiarly gratifying to me to have been with you when Leigh, Garnett, W. Meade and I must add M——, were in Richmond. If we exclude every “party man and man of ambition” from our church, I fear we shall have as thin a congregation as Dean Swift had when he addressed his clerk “Dearly beloved Roger!” What I like M. for, is neither his courtesy nor his intelligence, but a certain warm-heartedness, which is, now-a-days, the rarest of human qualities. His manner I think peculiarly unfortunate. There is an ostentation of ornament (which school boys lay aside when they reach the senior class) and a labored infelicity of expression that is hurtful to one's feelings—we are in terror for the speaker—but this fault he has already in some degree corrected, and by the time he is as old as you or I, it will have worn off. I was greatly revolted by it, on our first acquaintance, and even now, am occasionally offended—but the zeal with which he devotes himself to the service of his friends and of his country makes amends for all. It is sometimes a bustling activity of little import to its object, but which is to be valued in reference to its motive.
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I am not surprised at what you tell me of our friend. We live in fearful times, and it is a perilous adventure that he is about to undertake. In a few years more, those of us who are alive will have to move off to Kaintuck or the Massissippi, where corn can be had for sixpence a bushel, and pork for a penny a pound. I do not wonder at the rage for emigration—what do the bulk of the people get here, that they cannot have for one-fifth of the labor in the western country? Surely that must be the Yahoo's paradise where he can get dead drunk for the hundredth part of a dollar.
What you tell me of Milnor is quite unexpected. He was one of the last men whom I should have expected to take orders—not so much on account of his quitting a lucrative profession as from his fondness for gay life. I am not sure that it is the safest path—The responsibility is awful—it is tremendous.
Thanks for your intelligence respecting my poor sister. If human skill could save her, Dr. Robinson would do it: but there is nothing left to smooth her path to that dwelling whither we must all soon follow her. I can give Mrs. B. no comfort on the subject of ——. For my part, it requires an effort to take an interest in any thing—and it seems to me strange, that there should be found inducements strong enough to carry on the business of the world. I believe you have given the true solution of this problem, by way of corollary from another—when you pronounce that free will and necessity are much the same. I used formerly to puzzle myself, as abler men have puzzled others, by speculations on this opprobrium of philosophy. If you have not untied the Gordian knot, you have cut it, which is the approved methodus medendi of this disease.
My neighbor C., who is the bearer of this, is called by the world a hard man—but I like him because he has a manliness of character—not common in this age of base compliance with what is and what is not (but supposed to be) the ruling opinions.