"I put off involving myself with its details as long as I could, and left the charge of that part of my inheritance to Westlock. As this was cowardly, I found an excuse for it in the quantity of work the money-matters of the deceased afforded me. At last there was no help for it; I had to undertake the responsibility. And if before I had had a pretty good guess at the elasticity of whatever it was that served my uncle instead of a conscience, it now became beyond a doubt that the purpose of his will and testament was to punish my juvenile offenses against him by making me a companion of old weather-beaten villains, whose cunning was such that Satan himself would have had to put his tail into his pocket, and become chimney-sweep in order to escape them. "This letter is written from a new town in Tennessee, a cheerful place--no better, though, for being built on speculation with my money: a few wooden cottages, half of them taverns, filled to the roof with a dirty and outcast emigrant rabble, half of whom are lying ill with putrid fever. "Those who are still moving about are a hollow-eyed, anxious-looking set, all candidates for death. Daily, when the poor wretches look at the rising sun, or are unreasonable enough to feel a want of something to eat and drink--daily, from morn to eve, their favorite occupation is to curse the land-shark who took their money from them for transport, land, and improvements, and brought them into this district, which is under water two months in the year, and for the ten others more like a tough kind of pap than any thing else. Now the men who have pointed out to them this dirty way into heaven are no other than my agents and colleagues, so that I, Fritz Fink, am the lucky man upon whom every imprecation there is in German and Irish falls all the day long. I send off all who are able to walk about, and have to feed the inhabitants of my hospital with Indian corn and Peruvian bark. As I write this, three naked little Paddies are creeping about my floor, their mother having so far forgotten her duty as to leave them behind her, and I enjoy the privilege of washing and combing the frog-like little abominations. A pleasant occupation for my father's son! I don't know how long I shall have to stick here; probably till the very last of the set is dead.