“I am painting portraits alone at present.  Our sitters are among our acquaintances.  We paint them if they defray the expense of canvas and colors....”

“Mama wished me to send some specimens of my painting home that you might see my improvement.  The pictures that I now paint would be uninteresting to you; they consist merely of studies and drawings from plaster figures, hands and feet and such things.  The portraits are taken by those for whom they are painted.  I shall soon begin a portrait of myself and will try and send that to you.”

“June 8, 1812. Mama asks in one of her letters if we make our own tea.  We do.  The tea-kettle is brought to us boiling in the morning and evening and we make our own coffee (which, by the way, is very cheap here) and tea.  We live quite in the old bachelor style.  I don’t know but it will be best for me to live in this style through life; my profession seems to require all my time.

“Mr. Hurd will take a diploma to you, with others to different persons near Boston.  I suppose it confers some title on you of consequence, as I saw at his house a great number to be sent to all parts of the world to distinguished men.  I find papa is known here pretty extensively.  Some one, hearing my name and that I am an American, immediately asks if I am related to you....

“The Administration is at length formed, and, to the great sorrow of everybody, the old Ministers are reelected.  The Orders in Council are the subject of debate at the House of Commons this evening.  It is an important crisis, though there is scarcely any hope of their repeal.  If not, I sincerely hope that America will declare war.

“What Lord Castlereagh said at a public meeting a few days ago ought to be known in America.  Respecting the Orders in Council, when some one said unless they were repealed war with America must be the consequence, he replied that, ’if the people would but support the Ministry in those measures for a short time, America would be compelled to submit, for she was not able to go to war.’  But I say, and so does every American here who sees how things are going with this country, that, should America but declare war, before hostilities commenced Great Britain would sue for peace on any terms.  Great Britain is jealous of us and would trample on us if she could, and I feel ashamed when I see her supported through everything by some of the Federal editors.  I wish they could be here a few months and they would be ashamed of themselves.  They are injuring their country, for it is their violence that induces this Government to persist in their measures by holding out hope that the parties will change, and that then they can compel America to do anything.  If America loses in this contest and softens her measures towards this country, she never need expect to hold up her head again.”