me a message from the principal merchants and citizens of Salem proposing and encouraging my return which instance of moderation I view as an honor to the town and respectful to myself. It affords me pleasure, and I would cheerfully accept the offer, but should the popular dislike rise against me, to what a plight should I be reduced, being at present (out for how long is a painful uncertainty) on the British government list for £100 a year (a competency for a single person exercising strict economy) to surrender this precarious allowance without public assurance of personal security. Imagine to yourself the distress of an old man, without health under such adverse circumstances and you will advise me to wait with resignation till the several Assemblies shall have taken decisive measures. Went to the Treasury and there received the agreeable information that the commissioners had granted my petition to appoint an agent to receive my quarterly allowance, after my departure from England, on making satisfactory proof of my being alive at the successive periods of payment. From this date an end to my doubts respecting my embarkation, its issue time must reveal. I know not in what employment I am to pass the small remainder of my days, should Providence permit my safe return home, but I shall not think part of it ill-bestowed in directing and assisting the studies and pursuits of my niece's children who are just of an age to receive useful ideas--with regard to the English, Latin, and Greek tongues. Sept. 25, 1784. Arrived at Boston at half past three o'clock. Landed at the end of Long Wharf after an absence of nine years and five months, occasioned by a lamented civil war. By plunder and rapine some have accumulated wealth, but many more are greatly injured in their circumstances. Some have to lament over the wreck of their departed wealth and estates, of which pitiable number I am, my affairs sunk into irretrievable ruin. On Sunday, being the day following, I left for Salem, where I alighted at the house of my former residence, and not a man, woman, or child, but expressed a satisfaction at seeing me, and welcomed me back. The melancholy derangement of my affairs has so entirely unsettled me, that I can scarcely attend to anything. I think it very unlikely that my home can be saved.[184] Salem, Nov. 22, 1784. Judge Curwin wrote to his friend Judge Sewall, Bristol, England, saying: "I find myself completely ruined. I confess I cannot bear to stay and perish under the ruins of my late ample property and shall therefore as soon as I can recover my account-books, left in Philadelphia on my departure from America and settle my deranged affairs, retreat to Nova Scotia, unless my allowance be taken from me." He however remained at Salem where he passed the remainder of his days dying in 1802 at the age of eighty-six. The foregoing brief abstracts from Curwin's Journal give some of the things which he saw and heard, and the hopes and fears which