chatham-place.

My dear Charles,

Your last has alarmed me exceedingly: surely you were not in your right senses when you wrote it, or you would never have mentioned to me a design of going into the army! How is it that you are yet such a stranger to me as to suppose I will ever concur in this measure? depend upon it I will not. I therefore insist upon your immediately laying aside all thoughts of so wild a scheme. Did I wish to exert an authority over you, I might say I have a natural right, derived from being the nearest relation you have in the world, to command your obedience in this instance. I was, too, the bosom friend of your father; and I now avow myself to be your friend likewise: as such, I again insist on your dropping all thoughts of the army. In/ the name of wonder what could put such a thing into your head, or induce you to think, for a moment, that it was in the least degree necessary for you to take such a step? Stay till you have occasion to adopt a plan for subsistence before you take the trouble of forming any; at present, you have not that apology to make; and if you had, I really cannot forbear saying, your choice appears to me rather a ridiculous one. Under the idea of being a gentleman by profession you would condescend to the very worst slavery, and let yourself out as a mark to be shot at for so much per diem. If a man enters into the military profession from interested motives he is generally disappointed; there being five hundred chances to one against his ever rising very high in it, merely by his merit, let it be ever so great.