I should have written you a long time ago, if I had completed the duties of my last circuit, so as to give you all the results. But I am as yet scarcely free from all the cases, which have been under advisement.

Your letter would have been sooner answered if I had not known that you had Courts to attend which would detain you for some time from home.

Your letter of the 11th July found me upon a bed of sickness, from which I was not very soon relieved. I had scarcely become convalescent, before others of my family were taken down— finally, I determined to abandon the Country, which was becoming universally sickly, and to take refuge with Mrs W. in this place, which has, thus far, been unusually healthy. I trouble you with this account of my past troubles, as it furnishes the only legitimate apology for my long Silence since the rect of your favor.