Noah Webster letter to Emily Ellsworth, 1840 August 8

New Haven Augt. 8 1840

Dear Emily.

I am told that your Emily is gone to Saratoga & expects to return & pass Commencement week with Mary. Mary has had a great party to celebrate the marriage of her brother Ezekiel, & yesterday a great dinner for her friends, two of whom, Mrs Hays, & Caroline [Tonbridge?], have just returned from Barbadoes.

Your mother is feeble, but keeps about in family affairs as usual. Rosalie has made nothing of getting up - she is about the house. But she occupies our best chamber, & only spare bed. After commencement, William goes to housekeeping, in the Cottage, north of the canal. It seems expedient for us, old people, to be able to enjoy more quiet, than we now can, & we want all our rooms.

Julia & family are now pretty well. A great many of thier friend will be there at commencement, as two or three classes are to assemble.

I have found means to finish my Dictionary, without borrowing of the banks, in the usual way, & I hope it will be completed by January. I had, the other day, a batch of Methodist ministers from New York & the west, bestowing great praises on my book, & urging me to issue proposals for publishing my Synopsis of

Twenty Languages. One gentleman from Cincinnati says he can get me fifty or a hundred Subscribers. How this will be I do not know. One thing I desire & that is, to be relieved from the toil of study, & business; & yet I am so accustomed to action, that I presume inaction would be tedious & perhaps not salutory.

From all I can gather from Harriet's letters, she is rather declining than otherwise. Poor woman, she has no good domestics, & in Amherst none can be obtained. Our New England equality, however much applauded, operates very severely on the old & infirm.

Accept for all our love & best wishes.

from your affectionate father

N Webster

paid

Son on Canal

PAID

Mrs Emily W Ellsworth Hartford

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NEW HAVEN Ct. AUG 8