Pray take them by the hand; and be assured 'that any
kindness shown them will be acknowledged as an additional obligation
conferred upon
Your affectionate
WM. PATERSON.
A. Burr replies to this letter:--
New-York, July 26th, 1776.
MY DEAR PATERSON,
I this day received your kind letter. It gave me a pleasure I seldom
experience. Can it be that you have still in memory the vagrant Burr?
Some fatality has ever attended our endeavours to meet. Why I have not
written to you I cannot tell. It has not been for want of friendship,
of inclination, or always of opportunity; but some unavoidable
accidents prevented so long, that I began to fear a letter from me
must be ushered in by some previous introduction, some anecdotes of
the writer, which might renew your remembrance, and authorize a
freedom of this nature. But your frank and kind epistle precludes
fulsome apologies, which; though sometimes necessary, I esteem, at
best, but a drug in letters.
I am exceedingly pleased with your friends, Messrs. Hugg and Learning,
but was unfortunate enough to be from home the day they came in town,
and had not the pleasure of seeing them till this afternoon. I felt
myself so nearly interested in the welfare of the province whose
constitution you are now framing, that I did not urge their stay with
the warmth my inclination prompted. If any other of our Jersey friends
should be coming this way, I should be happy in showing them every
civility in my power.
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