"Our worthy Friend Thoˢ Goodwin being just about to imbark on his returne to North America I could not let so favorable an opportunity Pass without returning you my thanks for your kind favor to me by Thoˢ Carrington. By him I intended to have answered it but his leaving this place without giving me the least notice if his returne (which he rather promised he would before his departure) has been the ocasion of this omission, which I hope my dear friend will not think an neglect. As I can asshure him his letter gave me that pleasure which may be felt on the meeting of long absent friends, for such was your letter to me. It revived fresh to my memory as tho I had been in the actual enjoyment of the many Pleasing and happy hours I have spent with you in those Rural and inocent juvenal amusements with which America alone abounds my sighs are often intruding and vainely wishing again for those past pleasures which I have there so often experience in those Solitary retreats, or what they people of this side the water call the wilds of America and which is I think a true Image of the following celebrated lines-- "'O Solitude; blest state of life below-- Friend to our thoughts and balm to all our woe Where lust no object for his fires can gain And Pride wants gazers to admire her train Where want no cravling feels no insults bear Kind Lethe of our Passions and our care Far from the Burse, from Casts and levels far The crowded Theatre and wrangling Bar O! far from cities my abode remove To realms of Innocence and Peace and love.' "My having had an oppertunity for the last ten years of my life from the vast Toures I have made in visiting the great Capitals in Europe of forming and inlarging my knowledge of Both the world and man and thereby know that true value of America and the Boundless blessings its inhabitance injoy. For without this oppertunity I might have remained in Ignorance of the real Blessings they Injoy and the State of happyness that subsists between them. For it's by comparison we learn to know the true value of all things--And from thence arises its real worth and esteem. "As this is the part of the world my department in life has fixed me, I have indeavored to accommodate and settle myself in a domestick life with my little Famely which consists of my dear Betsey and her little boy." THE LOVE-STORY OF THE NOTED NATHANIEL MOORE AND "THE HEAVENLY ELLEN," A BELLE OF CHAMBERS STREET, NEW YORK CITY [Illustration] [Illustration] THE LOVE-STORY OF THE NOTED NATHANIEL MOORE AND "THE HEAVENLY ELLEN," A BELLE OF CHAMBERS STREET, NEW YORK CITY