SIR:--You are a merchant of respectability, as well as a member of the Society of Friends--a society for which I have the highest respect, although I do not happen to have been born a member of it. I should very much regret to see you made the victim of a designing woman, and linked for life to one who would bring disgrace upon your name and family. Report says that you are engaged to be married, or that you very probably may be so at an early period, to Miss Eleanor Hill, the ward for some years of Dr. Philip Pomeroy, and who is still resident in the house of that medical gentleman. I suppose that you know very little of the early history of the young lady, as, if you had known, you would never have allowed yourself to be entangled in that manner. Her father left her a few thousands of dollars in property, which she no doubt has the reputation of still possessing, while I have very good reason to know that it has really all (or nearly all) been used up in unfortunate speculations by different persons to whom she intrusted it, and that she is little else than a beggar, except as the Doctor offers her a home. As to her personal character, which is the thing of greatest consequence at the present moment,--Miss Hill was a very giddy girl, and many of her friends had fears for her future; but none of them foresaw what would indeed be the issue of the unfortunate situation in which she was placed. I am writing this letter, as you must be aware, for no purposes of my own, and simply to serve an honorable man who seems to have been tricked and cajoled by unscrupulous people. As a consequence, I must ask of you as a right which you cannot disregard, that you will not show this letter to Dr. Pomeroy, who might know enough of the direction from which such a revelation would be likeliest to come, to awaken his suspicion and put him in the way of injuring me. This promised, I now go on to state what you will never cease to thank me for communicating to you, if you are the high-toned man of honor that I suppose. Dr. Pomeroy is well known to be a man of somewhat violent passions; and though I believe that his conduct has been nearly spotless during his professional career, yet there are stains against him for which he is probably the sorriest of men in his calmer moments. Miss Hill, as I have said, was giddy and thoughtless, if no worse; and very soon after the death of her father, those who happened to see her in company with her guardian, noticed that she paid him attentions which showed a very warm personal attachment, while he received them as a bachelor man of the world could not very well avoid receiving such marks of regard from a young and pretty girl. How long this went on, I am not at liberty to say,