I have received your Letter of the 6th Inst. with the Receipt for making Crown Soap which is very clearly written, and I thank you for it, as well as for the Account of our Relations in New England, who are more numerous that I imagin’d, tho’ I think you have omitted some. (unless they are all dead) I mean a Family at Providence, their Name I forget, but the Mother was a Daughter of our Brother Samuel, or a Grandaughter.

As to my Health which you enquire after, it is much the same as it has been for some Years past. The Pains caus’d sometimes by the Stone do not augment, my Appetite continues good, and my Temper generally chearful; my Strength and Activity diminishing indeed but by slow degrees. I don’t know what the Answer was which Chesterfield gave to his Son’s Widow.

Your Letter to Mr. Vernon seems to me very proper and well-written, and I think he was wrong in detaining the Five Dollars. But when we consider that he was under no legal Obligation to pay a Debt contracted by his Son, we may be glad that we have recover’d so much of it, and that when it is so common to pay the Interest of an old Debt in ill Language, he has paid you only in Silence. It is a Family I have formerly been in Friendship with, and I would not have you trouble them with any farther Demands.

I have receiv’d a Letter from the Widow you mention as having had a Husband kill’d in Hopkin’s Fleet, but she has sent me no Vouchers on which I might found an Application in her Favour, and I am afraid she has no other Proof of the Fact but a strong Persuasion, as she tells me, “he was in the Fleet as sure as I am alive, and lost his Life in their Cause.” and afterwards says, “I have waited near Eight Years in hopes that he was taken and would return, but now my hopes are all fled; that he fell a Victim in their Cause I have not the least doubt.” It is strange that in eight Years she had not been able to learn whether he had been kill’d or not; and as the Congress long since appointed commissioners to examine and settle the Claims of Persons or the Representatives of Persons who had served in their Ships or Armies, which Commissioners are doubtless provided with Muster Rolls of the several Corps, I wonder at her not having apply’d directly to them. But there are People in the World, I have met with many such, who love to have a kind of Pocket Complaint, always at hand, with which they endeavour to procure Compassion, by exhibiting it every where and to every body but those shose proper Business it would be to redress it. These they avoid, lest their darling Complaint being examined should be found to have no Foundation. I have written an Answer to her Letter, which I enclose. If you should have any future Applications of this sort made to you to be haded to me, I think you may avoid giving your self any trouble with them, by acquainting the People that I was absent all the War, must be unacquainted with the Facts, am now at a distance from Congress, have at present no Connection with that Body; and that the Application is more proper to be made to the Delegates from their own State than to me.

My new Alphabet is in a printed Book of my Pieces, which I will send you the first Opportunity I have by Water. The Petition of ? is enclos’d. It should not be made publick.

I do not wonder at your blaming me for accepting the Government. We have all of us Wisdom enough to judge what others ought to do, or not to do in the Management of their Affairs; and ’tis possible I might blame you as much if you were to accept the Offer of a young Husband. My Example may teach you not to be too confident in your own Prudence; as it teaches me not to be surpris’d at such an Event should it really happen.

We all join in Love, &c. and I am ever Your affectionate Brother