52 LETTER-FILES OF S. W. JOHNSON 



Your abstemiousness in meats and drink will be very likely 

 to promote health, if you do not overtax yourself with too 

 close application to studies. . . . Knauth, Nachod and Kiihne 

 want 74 1/2 cents for the Prussian thaler, I think it paying 

 rather dear. I have been today to Carthage and let Mr. 

 Stuart have $210. He will send it to Mr. Le Ray. Mr. Stuart 

 says you will get the money. You will write to Mr. Le Ray 

 de Chaumont, Rue St. Florentine No. 2, Paris, that your 

 father has P. Sommerville Stuart's receipt for $210. to be 

 sent to him for you. He, Mr. Le Ray, will either pay the 

 amount on your draft or send in some way so that you will 

 get the money, so says Mr. Stuart, very surely, but how much 

 it will cost he does not know. He says money in Europe, as 

 in this country, is merchandise, but so far as he and Mr. 

 Le Ray are concerned, they take nothing more than they pay 

 out. Mr. Stuart seemed very willing to send, he has money 

 to send besides yours, and has nearly every week, and it all 

 has reached its destination. ... I wish you a happy New 

 Year. God bless you and make you useful. Your Mother is 

 more comfortable. Our love to you. Affectionately, 



A. A. Johnson. 



James Donatien Le Bay de Chaumont, through his 

 intimacy with Benjamin Franklin, who passed several 

 years in his father's house at Passy, became interested 

 in American affairs, and in 1785 visited this country 

 on a business errand for his father, who had given a 

 substantial part of his large fortune to the cause of 

 American independence. Through the influence of 

 Gouverneur Morris, Mr. Le Ray then made the first of 

 his large purchases of ''wild lands" in Northern New 

 York State. His son Vincent, referred to in the pre- 

 ceding letter, was educated in France, and after May 

 1807, resided on the New York State lands, where his 

 great house at Le Raysville is still standing. In 1853, 



