193

    To Sarah Savage Thatcher

    Philadelphia        25 February 1800

    My dear—

    By the time this reaches you I presume you will be [as] anxious to recieve a little cash as to hear that I am much recovered of the cold & cough I had when I wrote last1—I drank tea last evening with Mrs. [Temperance Hedge] Lee, who is finely; she told me she had been writing you almost the whole day—I beged her to be very minute & particular in all her accounts of what she had seen & heard since her coming to the City—for Girls are better calculated for these things than men—She is in a considerable round of company, & to her I refer you for the fashions &c

    Should any of our acquaintance enquire after news—tell them, we have none from beyond sea later than what they have seen—particularly no information of our Envoys at France2—

    Captain Truxton commander of the American ship Constellation has had a very severe action with a French Ship of fifty four Guns; in which the latter was beat off—& the former had fourteen men killed & twenty three wounded—with the loss of her main-mast—Had it not been for this misfortune, probably, Truxton would have taken the Frenchman3—

    This days mail has not arrived, by it I expect Letters from you & Phillips, I have had but one from him since you left Portland—

    The weather here begins to have the appearance of approaching Spring, which greatly increases my desire of geting home—I want to walk over the fields & pastures—but I think it probable they are yet covered with snow, & three or four weeks home will be time enough for me to think of that high enjoyment—

    Let me hear from you & how the out-door affairs are carried on—I trust they are taken good care of by friend Jotham—I have directed a light plough to be sent down by the first spring vessells—& shall send a quantity of hay seed, & two barrells of Plaster of Paris.

    Yours most affectionately

    * * *

    ALS, TFP. Addressed to Biddeford; franked.