Again, when the poor woman came to ask a charity in
Philadelphia, you whispered, that she looked like
a drunkard, and that half a dollar was enough to give
her for the ale-house. Those who want the dispositions
to give, easily find reasons why they ought not to
give. When I sought her out afterwards, and did
what I should have done at first, you know, that she
employed the money immediately towards placing her
child at school. If our country, when pressed
with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed
by its heads instead of its’ hearts, where should
we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high
as Hainan’s. You began to calculate, and
to compare wealth and numbers: we threw up a
few pulsations of our blood; we supplied enthusiasm
against wealth and numbers; we put our existence to
the hazard, when the hazard seemed against us, and
we saved our country: justifying, at the same
time, the ways of Providence, whose precept is, to
do always what is right, and leave the issue to him.
In short, my friend, as far as my recollection serves
me, I do not know that I ever did a good thing on
your suggestion, or a dirty one without it. I
do for ever, then, disclaim your interference in my
province. Fill paper as you please with triangles
and squares: try how many ways you can hang and
combine them together. I shall never envy nor
control your sublime delights. But leave me to
decide when and where friendships are to be contracted.
You say I contract them at random. So you said
the woman at Philadelphia was a drunkard. I receive
none into my esteem, till I know they are worthy of
it. Wealth, title, office, are no recommendations
to my friendship. On the contrary, great good
qualities are requisite to make amends for their having
wealth, title, and office. You confess, that,
in the present case, I could not have made a worthier
choice. You only object, that I was so soon to
lose them. We are not immortal ourselves, my
friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so?
We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without
alloy. It is the law of our existence; and we
must acquiesce. It is the condition annexed to
all our pleasures, not by us who receive, but by him
who gives them. True, this condition is pressing
cruelly on me at this moment. I feel more fit
for death than life. But when I look back on the
pleasures of which it is the consequence, I am conscious
they were worth the price I am paying. Notwithstanding
your endeavors, too, to damp my hopes, I comfort myself
with expectations of their promised return. Hope
is sweeter than despair; and they were too good to
mean to deceive me. ‘In the summer,’
said the gentleman; but ‘In the spring,’
said the lady; and I should love her for ever, were
it only for that! Know, then, my friend, that
I have taken these good people into my bosom; that
I have lodged them in the warmest cell I could find;
that I love them, and will continue to love them through
life; that if fortune should dispose them on one side