"Your very friendly letter of last month has afforded much more satisfaction than all the formal compliments and empty ceremonies of mere etiquette could possibly have done. I am not apt to forget the feelings which have been inspired by my former society with good acquaintances, nor to be insensible to their expressions of gratitude to the president; for you know me well enough to do me the justice to believe that I am fond only of what comes from the heart. Under a conviction that the demonstrations of respect and affection to him originate in that source, I cannot deny that I have taken some interest and pleasure in them. The difficulties which first presented themselves to view on his first entering upon the presidency, seem thus to be in some measure surmounted. It is owing to the kindness of our numerous friends in all quarters that my new and unwished-for situation is not indeed a burden to me. When I was much younger, I should probably have enjoyed the innocent gayeties of life as much as most persons of my age; but I had long since placed all the prospects of my future happiness in the still enjoyments of the fireside at Mount Vernon. "I little thought, when the war was finished, that any circumstances could possibly happen, which would call the general into public life again. I had anticipated that, from that moment, we should be suffered to grow old together in solitude and tranquillity. That was the first and dearest wish of my heart. I will not, however, contemplate with too much regret, disappointments that were inevitable, though his feelings and my own were in perfect unison with respect to our predilection for private life. Yet I cannot blame him for having acted according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice of his country. The consciousness of having attempted to do all the good in his power, and the pleasure of finding his fellow-citizens so well satisfied with the disinterestedness of his conduct, will, doubtless, be some compensation for the great sacrifices which I know he has made. Indeed, on his journey from Mount Vernon to this place in his late tour through the Eastern States, by every public and every private information which has come to him, I am persuaded he has experienced nothing to make him repent his having acted from what he conceived to be a sense of indispensable duty. On the contrary, all his sensibility has been awakened in receiving such repeated and unequivocal proofs of sincere regard from his countrymen.