DEAR SIR,--Your polite note and the valuable books accompanying it,
forwarded by our friend Perkins, of New York, have been duly and
gratefully received.

You will perceive, by the number of the "Panoplist" enclosed, that we are
strangers neither to your works nor your character. It has given me much
pleasure as an American to make both more extensively known among my
countrymen.

I have purchased several hundred of your spelling books for a charitable
society to which I belong, and they have been dispersed in the new
settlements in our country, where I hope they will do immediate good,
besides creating a desire and demand for more. It will ever give me
pleasure to hear from you when convenient. Letters left at Mr. Taylor's
will find me.

I herewith send you two or three pamphlets and a copy of the last edition
of my "American Gazetteer" which I pray you to accept as a small token of
the high respect and esteem with which I am

Your friend,
J. MORSE.

Young Morse now settled down to serious work as the following extracts
will show, which I set down without further comment, passing rapidly over
the next few years. He was, however, not entirely absorbed in his books
but still longed for the pleasures of the chase:--

"May 13, 1807. Just now I asked Mr. Twining to let me go a-gunning for