MY DEAR FRIEND,—­I have this moment received a letter from Miss Vaughan in London, dated February 20, 1812, and, knowing the passage below would be interesting to you, I transcribe it with pleasure, and add my very sincere wish that all your hopes may be realized.

“Dr. Morse’s son is considered a young man of very promising talents by Mr. Allston and Mr. West and by those who have seen his paintings.  We have seen him and think his modesty and apparent amiableness promise as much happiness to his friends as his talents may procure distinction for himself.  He is peculiarly fortunate, not only in having Mr. Allston for an adviser and friend, but in his companion in painting, Mr. Leslie, a young man from Philadelphia highly recommended by my uncle there, and whose extreme diffidence adds to the most promising talents the patient industry and desire of improvement which are necessary to bring them to perfection.  They have been drawing each other’s pictures.  Mr. Leslie is in the Spanish costume and Mr. Morse in Highland dress.  They are in an unfinished state, but striking resemblances.”

This Highland lad, I hope, my dear friend, you will see, and in due time be again blessed with the interesting original.

At this time the good father was sore distressed financially.  He was generous to a fault and had, by endorsing notes and giving to others, crippled his own means.  He says in a letter to his son dated March 21, 1812:—­

“The Parkman case remains yet undecided and I know not that it ever will be.  There is a strange mystery surrounding the business which I am not able to unravel.  The court is now in session in Boston which is expected to decide the case.  In a few days we shall be able to determine what we have to expect from this case.  If we lose it, your mother and I have made up our minds to sit down contented with the loss.  I trust we shall be enabled to pay our honest debts without it and to support ourselves.

“As to you and your brothers, I trust, with your education, you will be able to maintain yourselves, and your parents, too, should they need it in their old age.  Probably this necessity laid on you for exertion, industry, and economy in early life will be better for you in the end than to be supported by your parents.  In nine cases out of ten those who begin the world with nothing are richer and more useful men in life than those who inherit a large estate....

“We have just heard from your brothers, who are well and in fine spirits.  Edwards writes that he thinks of staying in New Haven another year and of pursuing general science, and afterwards of purchasing a plantation and becoming a planter in some one of the Southern States!!  Perhaps he intends to marry some rich planter’s daughter and to get his plantation and negroes in that way.  This, I imagine, will be his only way to do it.