LETTER TO 



ease and plenty ; but still, they sighed for Connecticut : and 

 especially the women young as well as old, though we, gay fellows 

 with worsted or silver lace upon our bright red coats, did our best 

 to make them happy by telling them entertaining stories about 

 Old England, while we drank their coffee and grog by gallons, 

 and eat their fowls, pigs and sausages and sweet-meats, by wheel 

 barrow loads ; for, though we were by no means shy, their hos 

 pitality far exceeded our appetites. I am an old hand at the work 

 of settling in wilds. I have, more than once or twice, had to begin 

 my nest and go in, like a bird, making it habitable by degrees ; 

 and, if I, or, if such people as my old friends above-mentioned, 

 with every thing found for them and brought to the spot, had 

 difficulties to undergo, and sighed for home even after all the 

 difficulties were over, what must be the lot of an English Farmer s 

 family in the Illinois ? 



987. All this I told you, my dear sir, in London, just before 

 your departure. I begged of you and Mr. Richard Flower both, 

 not to think of the Wildernesses. I begged of you to go to within 

 a day s ride of some of these great cities, where your ample capital 

 and your great skill could not fail to place you upon a footing, 

 at least, with the richest amongst the most happy and enlightened 

 Yeomanry in the world ; where you would find every one to praise 

 the improvements you would introduce, and nobody to envy you 

 any thing that you might acquire. Where you would find society 

 as good, in all respects, as that which you had left behind you. 

 Vvhere you would find neighbours ready prepared for you far 

 more generous and hospitable than those in England can be, 

 loaded and pressed down as they are by the inexorable hand of the 

 Borough -villains. I offered you a letter (which, I believe, I sent 

 you), to my friends the PAULS. &quot; But,&quot; said I, &quot; you want no 



letter. Go into Philadelphia, or Bucks, or Chester, or Mont- 

 gomery County ; tell any of the Quakers, or any body else, that 

 you are an English Farmer, come to settle amongst them ; and, 

 I ll engage that you will instantly have friends and neighbours 

 c as good and as cordial as those that you leave in England.&quot; 



988. At this very moment, if this plan had been pursued, you 

 would have had a beautiful farm of two or three hundred acres. 

 Fine stock upon it feeding on Swedish Turnips. A house over 

 flowing with abundance ; comfort, ease, and, if you chose, 

 elegance, would have been your inmates ; libraries, public and 

 private within your reach ; and a communication with England 

 much more quick and regular than that which you now have even 

 with Pittsburgh. 



989. You say, that &quot; Philadelphians know nothing of the Western 

 &quot; Countries.&quot; Suffer me, then, to say, that you know nothing 

 of the Atlantic States, which, indeed, is the only apology for your 

 saying, that the Americans have no mutton fit to eat, and regard it 

 only as a thing fit for dogs. In this island every farmer has sheep. 

 T kill fatter lamb than I ever saw in England, and the fattest 



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