LIFE OF WILSON. 
xlvii 
On Friday, the 7th December, I reached Gray’s Ferry, hav- 
ing walked forty-seven miles that day. I was absent two 
months on this journey, and I traversed in that time upwards 
of twelve hundred miles. 
“ The evening of my arrival I went to L***h’s, whose wife 
had got twins, a boy and a girl. The boy was called after me: 
this honour took six dollars more from me. After paying for a 
cord of wood, I was left with only three quarters of a dollar.” 
TO MR. WM. BARTRAM. 
Union School, December, 24, 1S04. 
“ I have perused Dr. Barton’s publication,* and return it 
with many thanks for the agreeable and unexpected treat it has 
afforded me. The description of the falls of Niagara is, in some 
places, a just, though faint, delineation of that stupendous cata- 
ract. But many interesting particulars are omitted; and much 
of the writer’s reasoning on the improbability of the wearing 
away of the precipice, and consequent recession of the Falls, 
seems contradicted by every appearance there; and many other 
assertions are incorrect. Yet on such a subject, every thing, 
however trifling, seems to attract attention: the reader’s imagi- 
nation supplying him with scenery in abundance, even amidst 
the feebleness and barrenness of the meanest writer’s descrip- 
tion. 
‘‘ After this article, I was most agreeably amused with 
“Anecdotes of an American crow,” written in such a pleasing 
style of playful humour as I have seldom seen surpassed; and 
forming a perfect antidote against the spleen; abounding, at the 
same time, with observations and reflections not unworthy of a 
philosopher. 
“The sketch of your father’s life, with the extracts from his 
letters, I read with much pleasure. They will remain lasting 
monuments of the worth and respectability of the father, as 
well as of the filial afiection of the son. 
* The Pliiladelphia Medical and Physical Journal, vol. I.- 
