D.C.
MS.
Cambridge Sat 28th
My dearest Willy, [p.m. March 1835]
Your letter was given to us on our arrival yesterday but not until it was too late to reply to it by return of Post as you desired, and as I should otherwise have been inclined to do, in the hope of as speedily as possible doing away with that extreme anxiety, which if you go on indulging, and aggravating, will undo your health, and unfit you to engage in any duties whatever.
My dear fellow! Such fears are quite uncalled for. If you should be so fortunate as to have the appointment in question offered to you, or any other of like kind, you will not be required to act as a Clerk--to understand the intricacies of Book--keeping, etc.,--these Persons will be provided under you--but you will have to act in concert with a set of Gentlemen who are of course Men of business, by which term your Father says is meant, such as give their mind and thoughts to business generally--and are prompt and active as occasions may require; and this mode of action will easily come to you, if you are attentive, with the occasion. When you mentioned the probability of being admitted into a Bank--we could not understand that you meant any thing more than, that you might have got occasionally a little insight, thro' your friend, of that one mode of business: but this is not needed for any thing you are likely to require--a general quickness of figures will come to you with a very little practice. I remember to have heard my Brother say-- that to be thoroughly acquainted with the Tables, etc., was quite enough previously to fit a man for business: that all the rest would come to him in the way wanted, when he was put into that way, whatever situation he were placed in, and that much time had been wasted by him in acquiring arithmetical niceties, which had afterwards been of no use to him. So that on this point you have no need to be anxious--only attend to your general improvement and habits of attention and reflection, so far as that you do not overstrain your nervous system, and indulge hypercrondical fears.
Your Father thinks you, with a little more experience, admirably fitted for such a station as he has been looking for--and every one must have a beginning--and you will have good helps and friends-- so dear Willy look chearfully forward--and we all hope for the best --but truly the prospect of our obtaining an Object seems very doubtful: perhaps our Friends may be out before this reaches you-- but even then, your father has so many claims, and admitted claims
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