"Nearly one half the city, embracing its most active and hitherto wealthiest citizens, have stopped or must stop payment. Confidence is prostrated, capital vanished.
"I am rejoiced to hear of your easy situation, and hope it may continue. Avoid responsibilities, and all is well with us. I am in no wise avaricious, and of course care not whether we make five thousand dollars more or less, if we risk twenty thousand to do it.
"I have a high eulogium to pay the Virginians, which I must reserve for another letter; as also an account of my travels from Petersburg."
In a letter to a friend, dated at Baltimore, he says:
"Since I have been here, I have been constantly occupied; and, although the heavy cloud which overhangs this city is discharging its contents upon their heads, they bear it well, resolving that, if they are poor, they will not be unsocial, nor uncivil, and on this principle they meet in little groups, without much style or ceremony, and pass sensible and sociable evenings together.
"I have really become very much interested in some of the people here.
"And now my advice to you is, get married, and have no fear about the expense being too great. If you have two children born unto you within a twelve-month, you will be the richer man for it. Nothing sharpens a man's wits, in earning property and using it, better than to see a little flock growing up around him. So I say again, man, fear not."
On his return, it seems to have been his object to interest himself as much as possible in business, and thus endeavor to divert his mind from those painful associations, which, in spite of all his efforts, would sometimes obtain the mastery. In the mean time, he had given up his house, and resided in the family of his brother Abbott; where he was welcomed as an inmate, and treated with so much sympathy and considerate kindness, that his mind, after a time, recovered its tone: his health was restored, and he was once more enabled to give his full powers to the growing interests of his firm. For the few succeeding years, he was engaged in the usual routine of mercantile affairs, and has left but few memorials or letters, except those relating to his business. In the winter of 1820, he made a visit to New York, which he describes in his diary under date of February 15, 1846: