"Before beginning my winter engagement I shall visit you. My salary for the next year is advanced from $40 a week to $400. I should now like--and indeed no pleasure in the world could equal it--to settle you and my dear sisters down in some respectable, handsome, and quiet part of Philadelphia, where you may gently pass your dear reserves of time apart from the care and toil with which you have too long been forced to struggle. I say Philadelphia, because I fear you could not be prevailed on to come to New York. And indeed I do not wonder; for, besides the numerous circle of friends you have, it is there that the sacred ashes of my father lie. "I shall write more fully anon. "Your affectionate son, "EDWIN." For three years now his income had been large and his investments sagacious. The time had arrived for carrying out his design. It was the autumn of 1829, when he was but twenty-three years old. Collecting everything he possessed, he went from New York to Philadelphia, paid the debts his father had left at his death twelve years before, bought a house in the name of his mother and sisters, and deposited in the bank to their account all he had remaining, thus securing them a handsome support whatever might happen to him. What a luxury it must have been to him to do this! It was the proudest and sweetest day he had known in his life. The deed was an unobtrusive one, with no scenery to emblazon it, no crowd to applaud; but the most eloquent climax he ever made on the stage could not speak so strongly to the heart. His own heart must have made blessed music in his breast as he returned to New York thinking that for his dear mother and sisters, after so many years of bitter poverty and toil, now there was to be no more drudgery or anxiety. Meeting his friend Lawson the evening after his return, he exclaimed, "Thank God, I am not worth a ducat!" and, relating what he had done, received his heartiest congratulations on it.