"I think, if the battle of Gettysburg had happened to be such a disaster to us as is always possible in the vicissitudes of war, business in New York would have been for the time, and how long a time I know not, suspended. Who can compute the consequences of the loss of Washington, Baltimore, and, perhaps, Philadelphia? Nor can I be insensible to the social disorders to which great cities are exposed during such civil convulsions as our country is now undergoing. "You are at present sure of a livelihood by a tenure and in a geographical position which are not affected by the military, political, or financial vicissitudes to which all business in the city of New York is exposed, and which might fall with peculiar severity upon a newly formed enterprise--undertaken in reliance upon profits which any of these causes might render illusory, and amid expenses which city life and city business inevitably involve. Under these circumstances I hope you will not consider it officious if I express the opinion that it would be wiser for you, holding to your present certainty, to await events which can scarcely fail to shift greatly, if not frequently, before a decision can be practically forced upon you. "2. I agree with you that after the war shall have closed the city of New York will afford scope for business corresponding to the revivified interests of the country; but I agree with this qualification--that it can hardly be that the transition can be made, changing, as it will, the application of labor and enterprise from one set of objects to another, without a shock of more or less duration, and that the retirement by any process of the paper issues may be expected to produce a period of constantly increasing depression. It will be after this that, with its metropolitan character more than ever assured, New York will return to a state of healthy prosperity, if its position as the trade centre of all the States be preserved.