I am still in this place....  I have written Lucretia on the subject of acquainting her parents, and I have no doubt she will assent....  I hear her spoken of in this part of the country as very celebrated, both for her beauty and, particularly, for her disposition; and this I have heard without there being the slightest suspicion of any attachment, or even acquaintance, between us.  This augurs well most certainly.  I know she is considered in Concord as the first girl in the place. (You know I always aimed highest.) The more I think of this attachment the more I think I shall not regret the haste (if it may be so called) of this proposed connection....

I am doing pretty well in this place, better than I expected; I have one more portrait to do before I leave it....  I should have business, I presume, to last me some weeks if I could stay, but I long to get home through Concord....

Mama’s scheme of painting a large landscape and selling it to General Bradley for two hundred dollars, must give place to another which has just come into my head:  that of sending to you for my great canvas and painting the quarrel at Dartmouth College, as large as life, with all the portraits of the trustees, overseers, officers of college, and students; and, if I finish it next week, to ask five thousand dollars for it and then come home in a coach and six and put Ned to the blush with his nineteen subscribers a day.  Only think, $5000 a week is $260,000 a year, and, if I live ten years, I shall be worth $2,600,000; a very pretty fortune for this time of day.  Is it not a grand scheme?

The remark concerning his brother Sidney Edwards’s subscribers refers to a religious newspaper, the “Boston Recorder,” founded and edited by him.  It was one of the first of the many religious journals which, since that time, have multiplied all over the country.

Continuing his modestly successful progress, he writes next from Hanover, on October 3, 1816:—­

“I arrived in this place on Tuesday evening and am painting away with all my might.  I am painting Judge Woodward and lady, and think I shall have many more engaged than I can do.  I painted seven portraits at Windsor, one for my board and lodging at the inn, and one for ten dollars, very small, to be sent in a letter to a great distance; so that in all I received eighty-five dollars in money.  I have five more engaged at Windsor for next summer.  So you see I have not been idle.

“I must spend a fortnight at Concord, so that I shall not probably be at home till early in November.

“I think, with proper management, that I have but little to fear as to this world.  I think I can, with industry, average from two to three thousand dollars a year, which is a tolerable income, though not equal to $2,600,000!”

CONCORD, October 14, 1816.

I arrived here on Friday evening in good health and spirits from Hanover.  I painted four portraits altogether in Hanover, and have many engaged for next summer.  I presume I shall paint some here, though I am uncertain.