Aunt Mecom having spent the Day with us we have reconsidered the Cause of the Soaps appearing so brittle, and as the Post goes very early in the Morning I shall confine my Letter to that Subject. We recollected that when we made the Soap sent to you, we collected the Scrapings of the Trough, and melted them over again with a little Lye; a Cake of this second Proces I put, wrapped in Paper, among two or three of the others, and on examining it now, we find it to be perfectly hard, without the smallest Crack while the others are broken in Pieces, though not so bad as that you discribe. From this Circumstance it seems as if the Lye, or to speak chymically the alkaline Salts, were not in sufficient Quantity in the first Proces to preserve the Consistency of the Compound; the Lye being the intermediate by which the whole is combined and made disolvable in Water. We are strengthened in this Idea from the Reccolection that when we made the first Proces the Leeches did not run freely enough to give us the quantity Aunt Mecom wished to have, and we were obliged to substitute a new Leech which answered imperfectly, and finaly, we boiled off with Less than usual. In addition to this We observe that in the soap she has just made, the Cakes begin to crack. In these she has increased the quantity of Wax, which is of a very brittle Nature, without increasing the quantity of Lye, the disproportion therefore is again in this. Some of the imperfect Cakes she dissolved again in weak Lye, a pint to two pounds, and these now discover no disposition to crack. Her motive in putting in more Wax was to increase the green Colour you seemed to wish for, but we find it best to keep to the Proportions which were fixed by the Inventor after [much] Experience. The Result of this is that though the Frost may have been prejudicial it is [not] the sole Cause of this unlucky Effect. I refer you for further particulars to Aunt Mecoms next Letter. I am in haste Yours dutifully and affectionately