Dear Brother,—I should tell you, “I long to see you,” but that my own experience has taught me there is no happiness and plenary satisfaction to be enjoyed in earthly friends, though ever so near and dear, or in any other enjoyment that is not God Himself. Therefore if the God of all grace would be pleased to afford us each His presence and grace, that we may perform the work and endure the trials He calls us to, in a most distressing tiresome wilderness, till we arrive at our journey's end; the distance at which we are held from each other at the present is a matter of no great moment or importance to either of us. But alas, the presence of God is what I want.

I live in the most lonely melancholy desert, about eighteen miles from Albany; for it was not thought best that I should go to Delaware River, as I believe I hinted to you in a letter from New York. I board with a poor Scotsman; his wife can talk scarcely any English. My diet consists mostly of hasty-pudding, boiled corn, and bread baked in ashes, and sometimes a little meat and butter. My lodging is a little heap of straw, laid upon some boards, a little way from the ground; for it is a log-room, without any floor, that I lodge in.