I hope to visit Boston this winter, or early in the spring. I often feel as if I had a burden of questions which I wish to propose to you for conversation. The want of this resource and satisfaction is one of the principal reasons that make me regret my distance from Boston. I shall always remember the weeks I spent with you, two years ago, with more interest than I shall ever feel it proper to express to you. It is one of my most joyful hopes of heaven, that such intercourse shall be renewed, and exalted and perpetuated forever. To the Same. NEW BEDFORD, Sept. 21, 1824. DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your letter and invitation [See p. 50] . . . . The result of your going to Boston is what I [134] feared, and it seems too nearly settled that nothing will give you health, but a different mind, or a different mode of life. Quintilian advises the orator to retire before he is spent, and says that he can still advance the object of his more active and laborious pursuits by conversing, by publishing, and by teaching others, youths, to follow in his steps. I do not quote this advice to recommend it, if it were proper for me to recommend anything. But I have often revolved the courses that might preserve your life, and make it at once happy to yourself and useful to us, for many years to come. I cannot admit any plan that would dismiss you altogether from the pulpit, nor do I believe that any such could favor your happiness or your health. But could you not limit yourself to preaching, say ten times in a year (provided one of them be in New Bedford)? and will you permit me to ask, nor question my modesty in doing so, if you could not spend a part of the year in a leisurely preparation of something for the press? I fear that your MSS., and I mean your sermons now, would suffer by any other revisal and publication than your own. With regard to the last suggestion of Quintilian's, I have supposed that it has been fairly before you; but perhaps I have already said more than becomes me. If so, I am confident at least that I deserve your pardon for my good intentions; and with these, I am, dear sir, most truly as well as Respectfully your friend, O. DEWEY. I am tempted to introduce here a sketch of my father as he appeared in those early days, writ-en by Rev. W. H. Channing, for "the London Enquirer" of April 13, 1882: