“My son,” he wrote, “is no better than when you left us. We have every reason to believe him worse. He has a cough, he is very thin, and there is a flushed spot upon his cheek which seems to his mother and myself the indubitable sign of vital decay. His frame is very feeble, and our physician advises travel. Under this counsel he set off with a favorite servant on Wednesday of last week. He will make easy stages through Tennessee to the Ohio, will descend into Mississippi, and return home by way of Alabama. He contemplates paying you a brief visit. I need not say, dear Clifford, how grateful I shall be for any kindness which you can show to my poor boy. His mother particularly invokes it. I should not have deemed it necessary to say so much, but would have preferred leaving it to William to make his own communication, were it not that she so particularly desires it. It may be well to add, that on one subject we are both very much relieved. We now have reason to believe that our apprehensions on the score of his morals were without foundation. It is our present belief that he neither gamed nor drank. This is a consolation, dear Clifford, though it brings us no nigher to our wish. It is something to believe that the object of our love is not worthless; though it adds to the pang that we should feel in the event of losing him. Our parting would be less easy. For my own part, I have little hope that his journey will do him any material benefit. It may prolong his days, but can not, I fear, have any more decided influence upon his disease. His mother, however, is more sanguine, and it is perhaps well that she should be so. I know that when William reaches your neighborhood, you will make it as cheerful and pleasant to him as possible. The talent of your young and sweet wife--her endowments in painting and music--have always been a great solace to him. His tastes you know are very much like hers. I trust she will exercise them, and be happy in ministering to the comfort of one, who will not, I fear, trespass very long upon any earthly ministry. My dear Clifford, I know that you will do your utmost in behalf of your earliest friend, and I will waste no more words in unnecessary solicitation.”