Accept my thanks for the care you take of me, in so kindly providing for me the articles you mention. Should they arrive safe, they will be a great assistance to me. The safest way, you tell me, of supplying my wants is by drafts; but I cannot get hard money for bills. You had as good tell me to procure diamonds for them; and, when bills will fetch but five for one, hard money will exchange ten, which I think is very provoking; and I must give at the rate of ten, and sometimes twenty, for one, for every article I purchase. I blush whilst I give you a price current: all butcher's meat from a dollar to eight shillings per pound; corn twenty-five dollars, rye thirty, per bushel; flour fifty pounds per hundred; potatoes ten dollars per bushel; butter twelve shillings a pound, cheese eight; sugar twelve shillings a pound; molasses twelve dollars per gallon; labor six and eight dollars a day; a common cow from sixty to seventy pounds; and all English goods in proportion. This is our present situation. It is a risk to send me anything across the water, I know; yet if one in three arrives, I should be a gainer. I have studied, and do study, every method of economy in my power; otherwise a mint of money would not support a family. I could not board our two sons under forty dollars per week apiece at a school. I therefore thought it most prudent to request Mr. Thaxter to look after them, giving him his board and the use of the office, which he readily accepted, and, having passed the winter with me, will continue through the summer, as I see no probability of the times speedily growing better. We have had much talk of peace through the mediation of Spain, and great news from Spain, and a thousand reports, as various as the persons who tell them. Yet I believe slowly, and rely more upon the information of my friend than on all the whole legion of stories which rise with the sun, and set as soon. Respecting Georgia,[205] other friends have written you. I shall add nothing of my own, but that I believe it will finally be a fortunate event to us. Our vessels have been fortunate in making prizes, though many were taken in the fall of the year. We have been greatly distressed for [want of] grain. I scarcely know the looks or taste of biscuit or flour for this four months; yet thousands have been much worse off, having no grain of any sort. The great commotion raised here by Mr. Deane has sunk into contempt for his character; and it would be better for him to leave a country which is now supposed to have been injured by him. His friends are silent, not knowing how to extricate him. It would be happy for him if he had the art himself. He most certainly had art enough, in the beginning, to blow up a flame, and to set the whole continent in agitation. 23 April.