It has often happened to me to learn that I am thought to be a cold man, but this I believe to be untrue; for though I am, as concerns social intercourse and freedom of speech, a man reserved by nature, I discover in myself a great freedom to express myself affectionately on paper――nor do I conceive that I am unlike others in feeling the loss of the many friends whom distance or death has separated from me. But I will not repine; I have had my day. As my brother was aware of the advantage it might be to me to secure the good will of the Fairfaxes, I was encouraged to visit Belvoir often, and thus was given me the chance to be, when he chose, in the company of his lordship, who was at this time a frequent guest at Belvoir with his cousins, and now and then at Mount Vernon. The company of these gentlemen was of much value to me, and in all ways useful. William Fairfax was a man of honour and great probity; also very courteous. He had seen service in both Indies, and had divers adventures in clearing the pirates out of New Providence, all of which I was delighted to hear of, and he to relate. He had lived as a collector of customs in the New England colonies, having taken a wife at Salem, and had a greater respect for them than was common in Virginia. Indeed, in those days our planters despised the men of the North as mere traders and Puritans, while they, in their turn, considered us godless, drunken, fox-hunting squires, out of which prejudices arose, during the great war, many jealousies and troubles, of which, God knows, there were enough without these. At this time I was old enough to take an interest in what my elders said of the politics of the colonies. I was more and more surprised to hear how lightly they regarded the governor. I listened also to their complaints of the too frequent interference in affairs of which we knew much, and the advisers of the crown in England very little. They complained that enterprise was crippled on sea and land, and considered smuggling a just way to escape some of the grievous duties laid between the colonies. They felt it unjust that we must use none but British ships on the ocean, and be cut off from the natural channels of commerce, etc. I listened eagerly and wondered, as a boy would, why these great gentlemen, who seemed to me so powerful, should submit to such wrongs. They spoke also with anger of the way in which the colonies were being loaded with thieves and women of the worst class, sent out as convicts. Of the political convicts they spoke with pity, as indeed they might, for some of these were gentlemen of good families, and in later times, being freed, prospered in honourable conditions of life.