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Baltimore.
Octo: 16th
1831.
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Dear
Sir,
It is a long time since I have written to you unless
with an application for money or assistance. I am sorry that it is so
seldom that I hear from you or even of
you — for all communication
seems to be at an end; and when I think of the long twenty one years
that I have called you father, and you have called me son, I could cry
like a child to think that it should all end in this. You know me too
well to think me interested — if so: why have I rejected your thousand
offers of love and kindness? It is true that when I have been in great
extremity, I have always applied to you — for I had no other friend,
but it is only at such a time as the present when I can write to you
with the consciousness of making no application for assistance, that I
dare to open my heart, or speak one word of old affection. When I look
back upon the past and think of every thing — of how much you tried to
do for me — of your forbearance and your generosity, in spite of the
most flagrant ingratitude on my part, I can not help thinking
<you> myself the greatest fool in [page 2:] existence, — I am
ready to curse the day when I was born.
But I am fully — truly conscious that all these
better feelings have come too late
— I am not the damned villain even
to ask you to restore me to the twentieth part of those affections
which I have so deservedly lost, and I am resigned to whatever fate is
alotted [[sic]] me.
I write merely because I am by myself and have been
thinking over old times, and my only friends, until my heart is full —
At such a time the conversation of new acquaintance is like ice, and I
prefer writing to you altho’ I know that you care nothing about me, and
perhaps will not even read my letter.
I have nothing more to say — and this time, no
favour to ask — Altho I am wretchedly poor, I have managed to get clear
of the difficulty I spoke of in my last, and am out of debt, at any
rate.
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May God bless
you —
E A P.
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Will you not write one
word to me? |
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