What is the diffeand an idle drunk fairly. The labour of doing this will make you careful and correct; and, when the habit is formed, the trouble is over. Habit is truly called "second nature." To form good habits is almost as easy as to fall into bad. rence between an industrious, sober man en one, but their respective habits? "Tis just as easy for Mr. Harrison to be temperate and active, as 'tis for poor Knowles to be the reverse; with this great difference, that, exclusively of the effects of their respective courses of life on their respectability and fortunes, the exercises of the one are followed by health, pleasure, and peace of mind, whilst those of the other engender disease, pain, and discontentto say nothing of poverty in its most hideous shape, want, squalid misery, and the contempt of the world, contrasted with affluent plenty, a smiling family, and the esteem of all good men. Perhaps you cannot believe that there exists a being who would hesitate which of these two lots to choose. Alas! my son, vice puts on such alluring shapes, indolence is so seducing, that, (like the flies in Æsop,) we revel whilst the sun shines, and for a few hours' temporary pleasure pay the price of perishing miserably in the winter of our old age. The industrious ants are wiser. By a little forbearance at the moment, by setting a just value on the future, and disregarding present temptation, they secure an honourable and comfortable asylum. All nature, my son, is a volume, speaking comfort and offering instruction to the good and wise. But "the fool saith in his heart, There is no God:" he shuts his eyes to the great book of Nature that lies open before him. Your fate, my dear Theodorick, is in your own hands. Like Hercules, every young man has his choice between pleasure, falsely so called, and infamy, or laborious virtue and a fair fame. In old age, indeed long before, we begin to feel the folly, or wisdom, of our selection. I confidently trust that you, my son, will choose wisely. In seven years from this time, you will repent, or rejoice, at the disposition which you make of the present hour. Your affectionate uncle, JOHN RANDOLPH. P. S.-We don't say "I only go there of post-days," but on post-days. LETTER V. Friday, March 21, 1806. MY DEAR THEODORE, YOUR letter (the first that I have received for three posts) has relieved me from very great concern and uneasiness on your account. Your reason for failing to write, was altogether insufficient. Compare, I beseech you, my son, the trouble which it would give you to send me a few short lines, with my suspense and anxiety lest you should be ill, or some disastrous accident have befallen you, and I am sure you will confess, that the loss, or miscarriage, of one of your letters, or the trouble of composing it, is nothing in comparison. Send your next by the New Orleans mail, or write by the Genito post, and I shall receive an early answer to this. Attend, I beg of you, my son, to your books. In a short time, I hope to see you; but let not this expectation stop your pen. Believe me, most truly, your affectionate kinsman and friend, JOHN RANDOLPH. T. B. DUDLEY. P. S.-I am sorry for the loss of Miniken's foal. How are the others?-and every thing, and every body? How and where is Dr. Robinson? and Mr. Dillon? and Mr. Johnston. MY DEAR THEODORE, LETTER VI. House of Representatives, April 5, 1806. LAST night I was again denied the pleasure of hearing from you. I was not, indeed, without hopes that the New Orleans mail, which came in this morning, would bring me a letter from you, but in this expectation I have been disappointed. By this time I hope your cousins and sisters are at home, and your solitary, uncomfortable situation much changed for the better. By this time, I trust, you have become familiarized, in some degree, to your new situation, and to its restraints; which, I hope, you will bear without murmuring, in the reflection that your present self-denial will essentially contribute to your future and permanent benefit. I have often regretted, since I parted from you, that it was not my good fortune, at your time of life, to be placed in a situation equally eligible with what I conceive yours to be. have both, unless I am much deceived in you, a laudable ambition to become learned and respectable men. Whether such is to be your future character, respected and esteemed by all good men, or whether you shall become mere vulgar beings, whose only business is "fruges consumere," will You altogether depend upon your present exertions. You, my dear Theodore, are too much straitened for time, to lose a moment that can be profitably employed; and you, my dear Buona, although younger by five years, must not conceive that you have any to lose. any to lose. Recollect that, two years ago, you could master Cæsar, and that if you had continued to progress, instead of falling back, which, from ill health and the want of an instructer, you were compelled to do, you might now be a finished Latin scholar, and somewhat of a Grecian into the bargain. The man who thinks himself so rich that he can afford to neglect his affairs and throw away his money, is not far from want, however great his estate may be. But time is, at once, the most valuable and most perishable of all our possessions; when lost it never can be retrieved. I hope to hear from you both, very soon, and to learn what you are doing, and how you like your situation. Your mother, my dear Tudor, is not very well, but Sally is quite Tom and Archibald Harrison have been with us, ever since Friday evening. Beverley has not returned from Mr. Randolph's. Dr. Robinson has, at last, brought his lady home. We dined with them to-day. So. Present me, very respectfully, to Dr. Haller. I write by candle-light, and the moths are swarming around my pen, and on the paper, so that you will have some difficulty, I fear, to make out my writing. God bless you, my dear boys! I am your affectionate uncle and friend, JOHN RANDOLPH. P. S.-I was sorry to find, on coming home, that D'Anville had been left behind. Theodore should apprize Dr. Haller of his never having had the small-pox, and embrace the first opportunity of being vaccinated. MY DEAR THEODORE, LETTER VIII. Bizarre, Thursday night, July 24, 1806. are I AM very glad to find that you and Buona* pleased with your situation, and that you have begun to learn French. At the same time, my son, if it is not incompatible with Dr. Haller's plan of instruction, I wish you both to resume your Latin. Present my respects to the Doctor, and communicate this circumstance to him. The following errors in your letter, a little care and reflection would, I am persuaded, have led you to avoid. "Have began" is not grammatical: began is the imperfect tense of the verb begin; have begun is the perfect. "None of us ever go in the street:" it should be into the street. The preposition "by," instead of the verb buy, to purchase. "Mellons," for melons. "I am dictated by the corrections, &c.," is not good English: it should be, I am directed by, &c. There can be no excuse for false orthography: and what but inattention could have caused the errors I have noted, or occasioned Buona to spell watch, thus"wacth?" God bless you both, my children. Your fond uncle, MY DEAR THEODORE, JOHN RANDOLPH. LETTER IX. Bizarre, Sept. 11, 1806. I THANK you for your letter, which I received by the post before last. Present my respects to Dr. Haller, and * The appellation by which he called his younger nephew.—D. |