According to my promise I now set down to write to you to give you a few particulars of my situation here and also concerning myself as I know they can not fail to be interesting. I must first let you know that me and Philip are both very comfortably situated on the eastern range of pavillions in...

Your two boys got up yesterday, I am sorry they are so small—I fear they will not be able to stand the work of the season—my intention is only to work one table—the moulder whom I have employed is an...

Charles with his charge of boys arrived yesterday evening a little before sun set. I sent them on to Mr Brockenbrough, and would have gone up myself but was detained by company, I go up this morning with Nelson, should Doctor Dunglison decline taking charles Nelson, I will endeavour to get him...

I am much in want of two boys to bear off bricks, if you can let me have them on hire it will be a great accomodation two of the number we had before would be prefered, you will probably be sending up a house servant for one of the Professors let the boys come with him if you send him...

Then he had lived abroad and he had introduced into his own household many of what were called foreign ways. He ate with a silver fork when other people used steel. He would have his plate changed several times during dinner, a habit not observed, in those days, by country gentlemen generally ......

My grandfather taught me to play chess, liked to play with me, and after our dinner, in summer time, he would have the chess board under the trees before the door, and we would have our game together. He had made, by his own carpenter and cabinet maker, John Hemmings, and painted by his own...

Some of his innovations, his theoretical novelties, so absurd in practice were mere anticipations of other men’s ideas. He built a light open carriage after a plan of his own with leather tops which closed at will, and he used it for all purposes of driving & travelling. This carriage was...

What you say in one of your letters of my grandfather’s being considered by a great many persons as a theorist, a man of projects, an innovator, set me to thinking how far there might be truth in these views of his character. He certainly had a good deal of ingenuity in contrivance—a good deal of...

Our grandfather seemed to read our hearts, to see our invisible wishes, to be our good genius, to wave the fairy wand, to brighten our young lives by his goodness and his gifts.

I remember the planting of the first hyacinths and tulips, and their subsequent growth. The roots arrived, labelled each one with a fancy name. There was Marcus Aurelius and the King of the Gold Mine, the Roman Empress, and the Queen of the Amazons ... Then, when spring returned, how eagerly we...