"I have often welcomed this anniversary with delight; but under all the various circumstances in which it has found me, I think I never felt the value of the privilege which it gives me of writing to you more deeply than I do at this moment.
"But I will first account to you for my being again at this place, the very name of which is no doubt by this time associated in your mind, as it is in mine, with images of danger and death. Of the events which took place during my former visit here, you have no doubt been informed by my letters to Boston, and of my departure from it, as I thought for ever, for the hospitable abode of my kind friends at Penrith, where I was enjoying much when I last wrote home. I intended staying with them until the middle of January, when Mr. McAdam's appointed journey south would secure me an escort to Birmingham, and I was, among other things, anticipating writing this under the influence of the same most delightful society which was operating upon my mind on this night last year. But I was doomed in this, as in many more important concerns, to feel the uncertainty of all calculations for the future; for on the 23d of December I received a letter from the physician of this place, written at the request of my aunt, who was apparently dying of typhus fever, begging me if possible to let her see me once more. I knew there were many reasons which made it important that I should come, if that were indeed her situation; and at the advanced age of sixty-eight, with a most feeble frame, I could not dare to expect a favorable termination. The risk of returning to such an infected region was, of course, much greater than my former residence there, but thus summoned I could not hesitate, and my good friends, even more fearful and anxious than I was, could not attempt to dissuade me. It was indeed an appalling undertaking, knowing so fully the evils to which I was coming which could not be avoided, and all that might ensue could not be kept out of sight.
"It was, I assure you, with many solemn thoughts, though hid by cheerful looks, that I took my leave, probably for ever, of that good family, and got into the mail alone on the morning of the 26th. My route lay across the dreary hill Stanmoor, and, as I had not even a single companion the whole eighty miles hither, you may be sure my cogitations were many and various. Among other things, I was struck by the singular coincidence which has always given to Christmas week a peculiar interest; neither could I fail to consider, on recollecting the various circumstances that had occurred in it, how deep was my debt of gratitude to that Being who had guided me through them all in safety. Dear N----, this is an overwhelming thought, and one which every day's experience forces upon my mind with increasing power, a power of which, it seems to me, it would have been impossible to conceive under any other than the very peculiar circumstances in which I have been, and, it would seem, am still doomed to live, while in this country. Imagine me, at this distance from all to whom I have been accustomed to look for dependence, a being alone in creation almost, literally alone in this strange land, making an excursion of eighty miles across the country, partly in coaches, partly in postchaises, without a being to protect me or appeal to, and upon such an errand,--and yet as safe as if a host were escorting me, calm, quiet, and perfectly easy as if I were taking a ride to Hingham; and then tell me, if the confiding spirit which our sacred religion creates in our souls is not worth all that we could possess besides.