A letter to James D. Reid, written on December 21, will show that the quality of his mercy was not strained:  “You may recollect when I met you in Philadelphia, on the unpleasant business of attending in a court to witness the contest of two parties for their rights, you informed me of the destitute condition of O’Reilly’s family.  At that moment I was led to believe, from consultation with the counsel for the Patentees, that the case would undoubtedly go in their (the Patentees’) favor.  Your statement touched me, and I could not bear to think that an innocent wife and inoffensive children should suffer, even from the wrong-doing of their proper protector, should this prove to be the case.  You remember I authorized you to draw on me for twenty dollars to be remitted to Mr. O’Reilly’s family, and to keep the source from whence it was derived secret.  My object in writing is to ask if this was done, and, in case it was, to request you to draw on me for that amount.”

In an earlier letter to his brother he remarks philosophically:  “Smith is Smith yet and so likely to be, but I have become used to him and you would be surprised to find how well oil and water appear to agree.  There must be crosses and the aim should be rather to bear them gracefully, graciously, and patiently, than to have them removed.”

While thus harassed on all sides by those who would filch from him his good name as well as his purse, his reward was coming to him for the patience and equanimity with which he was bearing his crosses.  The longing for a home of his own had been intense all through his life and now, in the evening of his years, this dream was to be realized.  He thus announces to his brother the glorious news:—­

POUGHKEEPSIE, NORTH RIVER,
July 30, 1847.

In my last I wrote you that I had been looking out for a farm in this region, and gave you a diagram of a place which I fancied.  Since then I was informed of a place for sale south of this village 2 miles, on the bank of the river, part of the old Livingston Manor, and far superior. I have this day concluded a bargain for it. There are about one hundred acres.  I pay for it $17,500.

I am almost afraid to tell you of its beauties and advantages.  It is just such a place as in England could not be purchased for double the number of pounds sterling.  Its “capabilities,” as the landscape gardeners would say, are unequalled.  There is every variety of surface, plain, hill, dale, glens, running streams and fine forest, and every variety of different prospect; the Fishkill Mountains towards the south and the Catskills towards the north; the Hudson with its varieties of river craft, steamboats of all kinds, sloops, etc., constantly showing a varied scene.

[Illustration:  HOUSE AT LOCUST GROVE, POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y.]