After I returned from Providence, I attended to my compilation with unremitting diligence, and hoped not only to obtain a temporary support, but to make a small provision for future subsistence. Stimulated by these sanguine views, I wrote early and late during one winter, and expected to put my work to the press the ensuing spring. But how vain were all these pleasing anticipations! A new misfortune arrested my progress, and made me feel my entire dependence upon divine Providence. I found my sight suddenly fail to that degree, that I was obliged to lay aside reading, writing, and every employment which required the use of my eyes. In this distressed situation, I consulted a number of physicians; and their prescriptions rather increased, than diminished my complaints. The gloomy apprehension of being totally deprived of my sight was distressing beyond description. I not only anticipated the misfortune of being obliged forever to relinquish those literary pursuits which had constituted so much of my enjoyment during life, and was at this time my only resource for a subsistence, but as I had from my earliest years been an enthusiastic admirer of the beauties of nature, I felt the most painful sensation in reflecting that the time might arrive, when ‘With the year Seasons return, but not to me return Day, or the sweet approach of eve or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer rose.’ At length, by the advice of a respectable friend, I applied to Dr Jeffries; and by assiduously following his prescriptions for about two years, I partially recovered my sight. For the encouragement of those who are troubled with similar complaints, I would mention, that when I first consulted the doctor, he had not any expectation my eyes would recover so as to enable me to make the use of them I have since done. But by applying laudanum and sea water several times in the course of the day, for two years, I recovered so far as to resume my studies; and by employing an amanuensis to assist me in transcribing my manuscript, I was enabled to print the work in 1799. Previously to putting the copy to the press, I consulted all the living authors, and showed them the use I had made of their works in my compilation, and they did not make any objection. As my eyes were still weak, I could not bestow the same attention in condensing the last part of my History, as the first; and consequently the History of the American Revolution was much more prolix than I originally intended. In giving an account of the war, my ignorance of military terms rendered it necessary to transcribe more from Dr Ramsay’s History, than I had done in any other part of the work. I therefore wrote an apology to the doctor, and had the satisfaction of receiving in return a very interesting letter from Mrs Ramsay, expressing her approbation of my work, and inclosing a bill of ten dollars. Before my eyes failed, I had