The weather & roads have continued bad—as if expressly to keep me within my bereavd Domicil—and I have had a great mind to give way to gloomy thoughts, and sad conclusions—but that I shd. be ashamed to have profitted so little by the example of fortitude & forbearance, I am so sensible of in you—my beloved—my friend and monitor! I recd. the Presidents speech1 this Evg. and like it pretty well, it being that sort of paper, which cannot excite in me either admiration or execration. With some readers it may, the latter, as he persists in a conviction of the expediency of our being represented at the Congress of Panama—but again, he gives the antidote in his last few lines, on the subject of our departed Patriots, so well expressed, that feelings of sympathy, must mingle in the enmity of the politician. In my last, I acknowledged the recct. of yours, dated Monday night—since which, nothing new has occured with us. I shall send to the office in the morg. & hope to hear again from you. I have not a line from the north since you left me.

Sam has just brought me yours, with Lucy’s enclosed. I rejoice to see, that you continued well. Lucy writes in good spirits—says her son’s are in Virga—that Maria Todd is married to Crittendon2—that she heard Payne had accepted the place of Purser on boa[r]d some ship.