I stayed in New York but one night.  I found it quite insipid after seeing Philadelphia. [The character of the two cities seems to have changed a trifle in a hundred years, for, with all her faults, no one could nowadays accuse New York of being insipid.] I went on board the packet on Saturday at twelve o’clock and arrived, as I before stated, on Sabbath evening.  We had, on the whole, a very good set of passengers from New York to this place.  On Sunday we had two sermons read to us by one of them, Dr. Hawley, of this place, and in the evening we sang five psalms, and during the whole of the exercises the passengers conducted themselves with perfect decorum, although one of the sermons was one hour in length....

June 25, 1810.

MY DEAR PARENTS,—­I received yours of the 23d this day and receive with humility your reproof.  I am extremely sorry it should have occasioned so many disagreeable feelings.  I felt it my duty to tell you of my debts, and, indeed, I could not feel easy without.  The amount of my buttery bill is forty-two or forty-three dollars.

Mr. Nettleton is butler and is willing I should take his likeness as part pay.  I shall take it on ivory, and he has engaged to allow me seven dollars for it.  My price is five dollars for a miniature on ivory, and.  I have engaged three or four at that price.  My price for profiles is one dollar, and everybody is ready to engage me at that price....  Though I have been much to blame in the present case, yet I think it but just that Mr. Twining should bear his part.

I had begun with a determination to pay for everything as I got it, but was stopped in this in the very beginning, for, in going to Mr. T. to get money, I have five times out of six found him absent, sometimes for the whole day, sometimes for a week or two weeks, and once he was absent six weeks and made no sort of provision for us.  Mrs. T. is never trusted with money for us.  Now in such case I am obliged by necessity to get a thing charged, and I have found by sad experience that a bill increases faster than I had in the least imagined....

“July 22, 1810. I am now released from college and am attending to painting.  All my class were accepted as candidates for degrees.  Edwards is admitted a member of [Greek:  Phi][Greek:  Beta][Greek:  Kappa] Society, and is appointed as monitor to the next Freshman Class.  Richard is chosen as one of the speakers the evening before Commencement.

“Edwards and Richard are both of them very steady and good scholars, and are much esteemed by the authority of college as well as their fellow students.

“As to my choice of a profession, I still think that I was made for a painter, and I would be obliged to you to make such arrangement with Mr. Allston for my studying with him as you shall think expedient.  I should desire to study with him during the winter, and, as he expects to return to England in the spring, I should admire to be able to go with him.”