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with the man who lives on the place. You will be better than I shall, and in the mean time I can go on with my literary works, without having my mind taken off by affairs of a different kind. I have received a packet from Governor Clinton enclosing what I wrote for. If you come up by the stage you will stop at the post office, and they will direct you the way to the farm. It is only a pleasant walk. I send a piece for the Prospect; if the plan mentioned in it is pursued, it will open a way to enlarge and give establishment to the deistical church; but of this and some other things we will talk when you come up, and the sooner the better.

Your's in friendship,

THOMAS PAINE.

I have not received any newspapers nor any numbers of the Prospect since I have been here.

Bring my bag up with you.

Esteemed Friend,

New Rochelle, Jan. 16, 1805.

I have received two letters from you, one giving an account of your taking Thomas to Mr. Fowler, the other dated Jan. 12; I did not answer the first, because I hoped to see you the next Saturday or the Saturday after. What you heard of a gun being fired into the room is true; Robert and Rachel

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were both gone out to keep christmas eve, and about eight o'clock at night the gun was fired; I run immediately out, one of Mr. Dean's boys with me, but the person that had done it was gone; I directly suspected who it was, and hallooed to him by name, that he was discovered. I did this that the party who fired might know I was on the watch. I cannot find any ball, but whatever the gun was charged with passed through about three or four inches below the window, making a hole large enough for a finger to go through; the muzzle must have been very near, as the place is black with the powder, and the glass of the window is shattered to pieces. Mr. Shule after examining the place, and getting what information could be had, issued a warrant to take up Derrick, and after examination committed him. He is now on bail (five hundred dollars) to take his trial at the supreme court in May next. Derrick owes me forty-eight dollars for which I have his note, and he was to work it out in making stone fence which he has not even begun, and besides this I have had to pay forty-two pounds eleven shillings for which I had passed my word for him at Mr. Pelton's Derrick borrowed the gun under pretence of giving Mrs. Bayeaux a christmas gun, He was with Purdy about two hours before the attack on the house was made, and he came from thence to Dean's half drunk, and brought with him a bottle of rum, and Purdy was with him when he was taken up.

store.

I am exceedingly well in health, and shall always be

glad to see you. Hubbs tells me that your horse is getting better. Mr. Shule sent for the horse and took him when the first snow came, but he leaped the fences and came back. Hubbs says there is a bone broke. If this be the case I suppose he has broke or cracked it in leaping a fence when he was lame of the other hind leg, and hung with his hind legs in the fence. I am glad to hear what you tell me of Thomas. He shall not want for any thing that is necessary if he be a good boy, for he has no friend You have not given me any account about the meeting house. Remember me to our friends.

but me.

Your's in friendship,

THOMAS PAINE.

TO FORGETFULNESS,

FROM

'The Castle in The Air,' to 'The Little Corner of the World.'

Memory, like a beauty that is always present to hear herself flattered, is flattered by every one. But the absent and silent goddess, Forgetfulness, has no votaries, and is never thought of: yet we owe her much.

dess of ease, tho not of pleasure.

She is the god

When the mind is like a room hung with black, and every corner of it crouded with the most horrid images

imagination can create, this kind, speechless goddess of a maid, Forgetfulness, is following us night and day with her opium wand, and gently touching first one, and then another, benumbs them into rest, and at last glides them away with the silence of a departing shadow. It is thus the tortured mind is restored to the calm condition of ease, and fitted for happiness.

How dismal must the picture of life appear to the mind in that dreadful moment, when it resolves on darkness, and to die! One can scarcely believe such a choice was possible. Yet how many of the young and beautiful, timid in every thing else, and formed for delight, have shut their eyes upon the world, and made the waters their sepulchral bed! Ah! would they in that crisis, when life and death are both before them, and each within their reach, would they but think, or try to think, that Forgetfulness will come to their relief, and lull them into ease, they could stay their hand, and lay hold of life. But there is a necromancy in wretchedness that entombs the mind, and increases the misery, by shutting out every ray of light and hope. It makes the wretched falsely believe they will be wretched ever. It is the most fatal of all dangerous delusions; and it is only when this necromantic night-mare of the mind begius to vanish, by being resisted, that it is discovered to be but a tyrannic spectre. All grief, like all things else, will yield to the obliterating power of time. While despair is preying on the mind, time and its effects are preying on despair; and certain it is, the dismal vision

will fade away, and Forgetfulness with her sister Ease, will change the scene. Then let not the wretched be rash, but wait, painful as the struggle may be, the arrival of Forgetfulness; for it will certainly arrive.

I have twice been present at the scene of attempted suicide. The one a love-distracted girl in England, the other of a patriotic friend in France; and as the circumstances of each are strongly pictured in my memory, I will relate them to you. They will in some measure corroborate what I have said of Forgetfulness.

On

About the year 1766, I was in Lincolnshire, in England, and on a visit at the house of a widow lady, Mrs. E-, at a small village in the fens of that county. It was in summer; and one evening after supper, Mrs. Eand myself went to take a turn in the garden. It was about eleven o'clock, and to avoid the night air of the fens, we were walking in a bower, shaded over with hazel-bushes. a sudden, she screamed out, and cried "Lord! look look!" I cast my eyes through the openings of the hazelbushes, in the direction she was looking, and saw a white shapeless figure, without head or arms, moving along one of the walks at some distance from us. I quitted Mrs. E-, and went after it. When I got into the walk where the figure was, and was following it, it took up another walk. There was a holly bush in the corner of the two walks, which, it being night, I did not observe; and as I continued to step forward, the holly-bush came in a straight

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