To permit me to offer my most since and hearty congratulations on your safe arrival once more to your native country, and the joy, and satisfaction it must afford every true friend to America to see you in the exalted Station which has been long due to your merit and indefatigable services for your Country. Your Excellency may possibly be surprised at this letter, coming from a person whom I suppose you must have long since forgot. May it please your Excellency to permit me to inform you that it is from the person, who, when a Lad of 17 came recommended to you in the latter end of the year 1763 from the late Thomas Cumming Esqr of Surry Street, in the Strand London, and whom you placed with the late Mr. James Parker of Woodbridge, New Jersey, at your departure for England about the year 1765. At the expiration of my apprenticeship I went to Charlestown, S. Carolina, but soon returned again to New York where I have remained ever since in the humble and unenviable station of a Journeyman Printer, and by practising the most rigid oeconomy am with difficulty enabled to main[tain a] Wife and six Children, who totally depend for their support on my labour, but it has pleased the benign Disposer of all Good to bless me with a healthy constitution, which I have preserved by temperance. I have at present the conducting and management of a Daily Paper here, called the New York Morning Post, whose unfortunate Proprietor is in confinement in the common goal for printing an obscene pamphlet called The Philosophical Theresa; his sentence was a fine of 100 Dollars and six months imprisonment, which does not expire till the 17th of March next. If it should chance to be in your Excellency’s power at any future period to place me in a more eligible station than my present one, by which I might be able to maintain and keep together my little family, it would be conferring an obligation which I could not ever sufficiently acknowledge, and I and my little ones will never cease to pray for your prosperity, welfare and all the blessings of this life, and a happy rest in that which is to come. Hoping your Excellency will pardon me for troubling you with this, I remain your most devoted Servant