Thanks dear Sir for your favour of the 14—Let the epitaph go to oblivion with the tables

In this famine of news reminiscences & recollections furnish the principal entertainment of the newspapers & have recorded many curious & memorable facts. You I perceive <have> are seized <on> with the spirit of the times & recollected a journey more amusing to me than any of them. I seem to see you & your then companion in your dignified chair & pacing horse & to follow you in every step of your progress—At <the> most of the houses where you stopt I have been entertained. The character of Mr Flint is well supported througout. As you advanced <through> towards Portsmouth I conceived a wish & a hope that you would make a visit to Newington & pass a night with my fathers eldest brother Joseph Adams minister of that town. I would give an eagle for an evenings conversation between those two patriarchs. They were both born in this town & not very different in age. They were nearly equal in learning & as preachers there was not two pence to boot, for I have heard them both. My uncle had been a great admirer of Dr Mather & was said to affect an imitation of his voice pronunciation & manner in the pulpit. His sermons though delived in a powerful & musical voice consisted of texts of scripture quoting chapt. & verse delivered memoriter & without notes. In consversation he was vain & loquacious though some what learned & entertaining: Flint was equally remarkable for reserve & taciturnity—Flint was full of dry wit humour and satire Adams had none of either. You may judge then what an entertaint you would have had in the sharp shot now & then bolted by the one on the other.

Reminiscences I find are associated with other reminiscences—Your journey has brought to my recollections one of my own made two or three years before yours. I went with a young preacher Ebenezer Adams the son of that uncle up through Chelmsford, to London Derby and a place beyond it called Litchfield if I remember right & from thence down <to> through the Kenlington to Newington & Portsmouth. Either going or returning we visited Parson Whipple whose lady persecuted me as much as she did afterwards father F—The lady had a fine figu[re] & a fair face. At dinner I was very bashful & sile[nt.] After dinner Parson W. invited us into another [. . .] where he took a pipe himself & offered us pipes I was an old smoaker & readily took one. The [. . .] lady very soon came into the room lifted up [. . .] her hands and cried out in a masculine voice I am astonished to see that pretty little boy with a pipe in his mouth smoking that nasty poisoned tobacco I cant bear the sight I was as bashful & timorous as a girl—but I resented so much being called a little boy at 15 or 16 years of age & as stout as her husband, that I determined not to be frightened out of my pipe so I continued to puff away You may well suppose that I bore no very good will to that lady till I afterward becames acquainted with the character of Miss Hanna Whipple who afterwards married Dr. Bracket & gave two thousand dollars to the botanical garden to Cambridge—The excellences of the daught[er] very early atoned for all the severity of the mot[her] & I have long since esteemed her an amiable & intelligent woman though some times a little too free with her guests. I recollect nothing more worth recording in my tour except that we called at Parson Bridges at Chelmsford & Parson Fogs at Kensington where we had much conversation respecting Mr Wibert afterwards my minister then much celebrated for the elegance of his style—By this time you will be <so much> fatigued <as> enough to be glad to read the reminiscence that I am your humb Sert—