my repugnance to the writing table becomes daily & hourly more deadly & insurmountable. in place of this has come on a canine appetite for reading. and I indulge it: because I see in it a relief against the taedium senectutis; a lamp to lighten my path thro’ the dreary wilderness of time...

but the general fact is I have observed, that at whatever age, or in whatever form, we have known a person of old so we believe them him to continue for ever after indefinitely, unchanged by time or waste decay.

nothing is more incumbent on the old than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform.

but our machines have now been running for 70. or 80. years, and we must expect that, worn as they are, here a pivot, there a wheel, now a pinion, next a spring, will be giving way: and however we may tinker them up for awhile, all will at length surcease motion.

I am now at that period of life when tranquility, and a retirement from the passions which disturb it, constitute the summum bonum.

Congress has just risen, having done nothing remarkable, except passing a tariff bill, by squeezing majorities, very revolting to a great portion of the people of the states, among whom, it is believed, it would not have recieved a vote but of the manufactories manufactorers themselves. it is...

I concur with you in doubting whether the great establishments, by associated companies, are...

I presume, like the rest of us in the country, you are in the habit of houshold manufacture, and that you will not, like too many, abandon it on the return of peace, to enrich our late enemy, and to nourish foreign agents in our bosom, whose baneful influence & intrigues cost us so much...

we have taken their Upper Canada, and shall add the Lower to it when the season will admit; and hope to remove them fully and finally from our continent. and what they will feel more, for they value their colonies only for...

the book I have read with extreme satisfaction and information. as to the Western states particularly, it has greatly edified me; for of the actual condition of that interesting portion of our country I had not an adequate idea. I feel myself now as familiar with it as with the condition of the...