The agreeable conversation I meet with among men of learning, and the notice taken of me by persons of distinction, are the principal things that soothe me for the present, under this painful absence from my family and friends. Yet those would not keep me here another week, if I had not other inducements; duty to my country, and hopes of being able to do it service. Thus he wrote to his wife about four months after he arrived in England in 1757. A few weeks later, he said: I begin to think I shall hardly be able to return before this time twelve months. I am for doing effectually what I came about; and I find it requires both time and patience. You may think, perhaps, that I can find many amusements here to pass the time agreeable. 'Tis true, the regard and friendship I meet with from persons of worth, and the conversation of ingenious men, give me no small pleasure; but at this time of life, domestic comforts afford the most solid satisfaction, and my uneasiness at being absent from my family, and longing desire to be with them, make me often sigh in the midst of cheerful company.[19] The real interest of Franklin's correspondence with his wife consists in the insight that it gives us into his private, as contrasted with his public, relations. His genius, high as it rose into the upper air of human endeavor, rested upon a solid sub-structure of ordinary stone and cement, firmly planted in the earth, and this is manifest in his family history as in everything else. The topics, with which he deals in his letters to Deborah, are the usual topics with which a kind, sensible, practical husband and householder, without any elevated aspirations of any kind, deals in his letters to his wife. There was no lack of common ground on which she and he could meet in correspondence after the last fond words addressed by him to her just before he left New York for England in 1757 had been spoken, "God preserve, guard and guide you." First of all, there was his daughter Sally to whom he was lovingly attached. In a letter to his wife, shortly before he used the valedictory words just quoted, he said: "I leave Home, and undertake this long Voyage more chearfully, as I can rely on your Prudence in the Management of my Affairs, and Education of my dear Child; and yet I cannot forbear once more recommending her to you with a Father's tenderest Concern." From this time on, during his two absences in England, Sally seems to have ever been in his thoughts. There are several references to her in one of his earliest letters to Deborah after he reached England in 1757.