“The strict and inviolable regard you have ever paid to truth gives me pleasing hopes that you will not swerve from her dictates, but add justice, fortitude, and every manly virtue which can adorn a good citizen, do honor to your country, and render your parents supremely happy, particularly your ever affectionate mother.

...  “The only sure and permanent foundation of virtue is religion.  Let this important truth be engraven upon your heart.  And also, that the foundation of religion is the belief of the one only God, and a just sense of his attributes, as a being infinitely wise, just, and good, to whom you owe the highest reverence, gratitude, and adoration; who superintends and governs all nature, even to clothing the lilies of the field, and hearing the young ravens when they cry; but more particularly regards man, whom he created after his own image, and breathed into him an immortal spirit, capable of a happiness beyond the grave; for the attainment of which he is bound to the performance of certain duties, which all tend to the happiness and welfare of society, and are comprised in one short sentence, expressive of universal benevolence, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’

“Justice, humanity, and benevolence, are the duties you owe to society in general.  To your country the same duties are incumbent upon you, with the additional obligation of sacrificing ease, pleasure, wealth, and life itself for its defense and security.  To your parents you owe love, reverence, and obedience to all just and equitable commands.  To yourself,—­here, indeed, is a wide field to expatiate upon.  To become what you ought to be, and what a fond mother wishes to see you, attend to some precepts and instructions from the pen of one who can have no motive but your welfare and happiness, and who wishes in this way to supply to you the personal watchfulness and care which a separation from you deprived you of at a period of life when habits are easiest acquired and fixed; and though the advice may not be new, yet suffer it to obtain a place in your memory, for occasions may offer, and perhaps some concurring circumstances unite, to give it weight and force.

“Suffer me to recommend to you one of the most useful lessons of life—­the knowledge and study of yourself.  There you run the greatest hazard of being deceived.  Self-love and partiality cast a mist before the eyes, and there is no knowledge so hard to be acquired, nor of more benefit when once thoroughly understood.  Ungoverned passions have aptly been compared to the boisterous ocean, which is known to produce the most terrible effects.  ‘Passions are the elements of life,’ but elements which are subject to the control of reason.  Whoever will candidly examine themselves, will find some degree of passion, peevishness, or obstinacy in their natural tempers.  You will seldom find these disagreeable ingredients all united in one; but the uncontrolled indulgence of either is sufficient to render the possessor unhappy in himself, and disagreeable to all who are so unhappy as to be witnesses of it, or suffer from its effects.