While on the subject of papers, permit me to ask one from you.  You remember the difference of opinion between Hamilton and Knox on the one part, and myself on the other, on the subject of firing on the Little Sarah, and that we had exchanged opinions and reasons in writing.  On your arrival in Philadelphia I delivered you a copy of my reasons, in the presence of Colonel Hamilton.  On our withdrawing, he told me he had been so much engaged that he had not been able to prepare a copy of his and General Knox’s for you, and that if I would send you the one he had given me, he would replace it in a few days.  I immediately sent it to you, wishing you should see both sides of the subject together.  I often after applied to both the gentlemen, but could never obtain another copy.  I have often thought of asking this one, or a copy of it, back from you, but have not before written on subjects of this kind to you.  Though I do not know that it will ever be of the least importance to me, yet one loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.  They possess my paper in my own hand-writing.  It is just I should possess theirs.  The only thing amiss is, that they should have left me to seek a return of the paper, or a copy of it, from you.

I put away this disgusting dish of old fragments, and talk to you of my pease and clover.  As to the latter article, I have great encouragement from the friendly nature of our soil.  I think I have had, both the last and present year, as good clover from common grounds, which had brought several crops of wheat and corn without ever having been manured, as I ever saw on the lots around Philadelphia.  I verily believe that a field of thirty-four acres, sowed on wheat April was twelvemonth, has given me a ton to the acre at its first cutting this spring.  The stalks extended, measured three and a half feet long very commonly.  Another field, a year older, and which yielded as well the last year, has sensibly fallen off this year.  My exhausted fields bring a clover not high enough for hay, but I hope to make seed from it.  Such as these, however, I shall hereafter put into pease in the broadcast, proposing that one of my sowings of wheat shall be after two years of clover, and the other after two years of pease.  I am trying the white boiling pea of Europe (the Albany pea) this year, till I can get the hog-pea of England, which is the most productive of all.  But the true winter-vetch is what we want extremely.  I have tried this year the Caroline drill.  It is absolutely perfect.  Nothing can be more simple, nor perform its office more perfectly for a single row.  I shall try to make one to sow four rows at a time of wheat or peas, at twelve inches distance.  I have one of the Scotch threshing-machines nearly finished.  It is copied exactly from a model of Mr. Pinckney sent me, only that I have put the whole works (except the horse-wheel) into a single frame, moveable from one field to another on the two axles of a wagon.  It will be ready in time for the harvest which is coming on, which will give it a full trial.  Our wheat and rye are generally fine, and the prices talked of bid fair to indemnify us for the poor crops of the two last years.