satisfy your curiosity? I am surprised that in the course of your
American travels you should not have found out persons more
enlightened and better educated than I am; your predilection excites
my wonder much more than my vanity; my share of the latter being
confined merely to the neatness of my rural operations.

My father left me a few musty books, which his father brought from
England with him; but what help can I draw from a library consisting
mostly of Scotch Divinity, the Navigation of Sir Francis Drake, the
History of Queen Elizabeth, and a few miscellaneous volumes? Our
minister often comes to see me, though he lives upwards of twenty
miles distant. I have shown him your letter, asked his advice, and
solicited his assistance; he tells me, that he hath no time to
spare, for that like the rest of us must till his farm, and is
moreover to study what he is to say on the sabbath. My wife (and I
never do anything without consulting her) laughs, and tells me that
you cannot be in earnest. What! says she, James, wouldst thee
pretend to send epistles to a great European man, who hath lived
abundance of time in that big house called Cambridge; where, they
say, that worldly learning is so abundant, that people gets it only
by breathing the air of the place? Wouldst not thee be ashamed to
write unto a man who has never in his life done a single day's work,
no, not even felled a tree; who hath expended the Lord knows how
many years in studying stars, geometry, stones, and flies, and in
reading folio books? Who hath travelled, as he told us, to the city
of Rome itself! Only think of a London man going to Rome! Where is
it that these English folks won't go? One who hath seen the factory
of brimstone at Suvius, and town of Pompey under ground! wouldst
thou pretend to letter it with a person who hath been to Paris, to
the Alps, to Petersburg, and who hath seen so many fine things up