you ever possess them, will be of little value and small estimation
unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them. Adhere to
those religious sentiments and principles which were early instilled
into your mind, and remember that you are accountable to your Maker for
all your words and actions.

"Let me enjoin it upon you to attend constantly and steadfastly to the
precepts and instructions of your father, as you value the happiness of
your mother and your own welfare. His care and attention to you render
many things unnecessary for me to write, which I might otherwise do; but
the inadvertency and heedlessness of youth require line upon line and
precept upon precept, and, when enforced by the joint efforts of both
parents, will, I hope, have a due influence upon your conduct; for, dear
as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found your grave
in the ocean you have crossed, or that any untimely death crop you in
your infant years, than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless
child.

"You have entered early in life upon the great theater of the world,
which is full of temptations and vice of every kind. You are not wholly
unacquainted with history, in which you have read of crimes which your
inexperienced mind could scarcely believe credible. You have been taught
to think of them with horror, and to view vice as

'A monster of so frightful mien,
That, to be hated, needs but to be seen.'

"Yet you must keep a strict guard upon yourself, or the odious monster
will soon lose its terror by becoming familiar to you. The modern
history of our own times furnishes as black a list of crimes as can be