Crossing the River Read Online Free PDF Page B

would be glad to learn my true age. When I write again I shall try and send you some curiosities. I subscribe myself a servant of God, and the friend of my fellow men. As this letter will reach you, I hope, by Christmas, I will conclude by wishing your good lady wife and yourself a Merry Christmas, and sincerely hope that you both enjoy many more. Farewell, dear sir, and receive the kindest wishes of your humble servant and affectionate son.
    Nash Williams
    Saint Paul’s River, Liberia
    March 10th, 1839
    My Dear Father,
    I am taking this favorable opportunity of writing a few hasty lines in the hope that they might be conveyed to you by the departure of the vessel Mathilda which will presently leave these shores for America. Your letter reached me on Feb. 5th, and was read with great joy. I declaimed it aloud to the people here and its kind contents caused some tears to flow. I am sad to learn that your brother has been called to his long and happy home, but reassured by the information that his was only a short illness of ten to twelve hours. That your good lady wife, Amelia, still enjoys rude health must be a great blessing to you. I would be happy if you could give her my regards, and inform her that there are many in this dark country of Liberia for whom she represents the highest achievement in womankind.
    Why, dear Father, you chose to ignore my previous letters, you do not indicate. I must assume that this represents your either not receiving them, or your finding their contents so ignorant and poor in expression that you rightly deemed them unworthy of response. Whatever your reasoning, I am overjoyed to receive news of my friends and family, with the one obvious exception. What news for yourself? Mr Lambert has taken an Alabama woman by the name of Bertha, and her son Prince, to live with him in his brick house in Monrovia. It seems he is doing well in business, although this illiterate woman chooses to behave herself improperly. And perhaps you have already heard, by means of some other source, that old brother Taylor and sister Nancy have both lost all religion. The former has in addition turned out to be a great and scandalous drunkard. He is accused of habitual intoxication, much nocturnal revelling, lewdness, and in fact everything that characterizes the immoral man. You may correctly deduce from the above that I have severed all connections with this man. They say that his decline was occasioned by the misfortune of losing his youngest son to a sore mouth.
    Of the two new arrivants that you recommended to my care, first good news and then sad. Young Solomon Williams is now comfortably situated here with us. He is working the fields for seventy-five cents a day in the hope that he might one day purchase some farmer’s tools to commence farming for himself. When he first approached my presence, I had no knowledge of him, save the name he bore. After a little discourse I recognized the fellow. At first he tested his freedom, and acted like a young horse out of the stable, but I soon reined him in. He is now learning his trade finely, and is upon the whole a very proper boy. He suits me well, and may one day (if he continues in a sober fashion) make a useful man for our young country. Of the second arrivant, only sad news. After surviving a difficult voyage of forty-nine days, marred by an outbreak of smallpox which took the lives of some thirty persons, he soon departed, but his end was peace. He was taken sick on a Monday and his end was Wednesday. His illness, though severe, was of only three days’ duration when it terminated fatally, his chief complaint being of a pain in the head. He lay in Monrovia and, according to sources, the Reverend visited him each day, and questioned him concerning his soul’s salvation, and whether the way from earth to glory was clear or not, to which he would always answer the same, that his hopes were anchored in Jesus Christ. He was, come Wednesday, perfectly sensible of his