To erase from your Mind any Suspicions that I am indifferent as to your Concerns I am induced to break through an established Rule of never writing to a Gentlemam that does not correspond with Mr Powel. I thought your knowledge of what is proper & your Attachment to him would have rendered it unnecessary for me to give you any Intimations on such a Subject. I cannot ascribe your Silence to any other Cause than a misplaced Diffidence. Had you, attentively, read the Note you received by Govr. Morris this Explanation would have been altogether unnecessary.

     I received yours My dear Sir of the 12th of Decr and am happy to hear from you & your family. It is but a poor consolation to tell you, that I sympathize with you for your late distresses, and that I have a deep sense of your friend & relations Calamity. It is nevertheless all that human weakness can do; and to do any thing more we must have recourse to a superior tribunal, to one, that I feel unworthy to approach. It is to that source I am now convinced we ought to address ourselves; to the comforter of the afflicted, and the protector of the weak.

I received the day before yesterday at my brothers your letter of the 7th and am much concerned to hear that your health has not been so good as I had been led to hope it was from what I had heard concerning it on your leaving Philadelphia. As your chills have left you we may however indulge the expectation that the Dyspepsy which has persecuted you will follow them or at least be greatly moderated.

I am grieved to learn by your late letter of your continued indisposition— I heard in the autumn quite by accident of your sickness at Philadelphia; but I presumed it was temporary. I most earnestly hope & pray that a good Providence will restore you to health & enable you to attend at the February Term. I shall feel quite lost <illegible> without you; & must say in all sincerity & frankness that I know not in whose judgment I have implicit a reliance, as in yours.

I yesterday recd a very discouraging letter from Mrs Washington from which I beg leave to trouble you with the following extracts. She says that the pain in her side encreases, and has for several days past been accompanied by a dull pain (as heretofore felt) in the shoulder; occasionally in the wrist and other Joints. She is certain she has night fevers– Wants appetite & sleeps badly. She has for some days discontinued the steel & bark being afraid, & very Justly she thinks, that those medicines have done injury to her side.

Mrs Washington’s mouth having got much better, we commenced the application of the mercurial ointment about ten nights ago. After using it for two nights, she became apprehensive that it had affected her mouth, and of course it was thought best to discontinue the operation untill these symptoms should disappear. At this period, the experiment was extremely flattering to our hopes. To use Mrs W’s expression, the ointment, with the gentle friction used in rubbing it on, acted upon the pain in the side like a charm.

Whilst I was in Richmond, Mrs Washington commenced the taking of the mercurial pills, and having most unfortunately persevered too long, even after the soreness in the mouth had taken place, a kind of salivation was brought on, & though not attended by a spilling, her tongue & mouth have been for 8 or 10 days so much swollen, that she has been unable to take any kind of nourishment not in a liquid form. Her mouth is now somewhat better, but I am greatly alarmed by the return of the pain in the side which had almost ceased.