I trust you will pardon my long delay in answering your kind letter. It has arisen from a variety of causes; when I received it I was very ill of a bilious fever , my two Sisters were confined at the same time, and we had nobody living down stairs for near three weeks . I am much better , but still an invalid, chiefly from want of sleep. Patty has a complaint on her chest, and constant fever, and is forbidden to talk , and poor Sally is in a deplorable condition. The dropsy is fallen on her legs which are much in the same condition that carried off my /last/ Sister. All this is depressing to my Spirits I pray God to support them and me during the short remainder of our pilgrimage.

I am glad to hear so good an account of your young people. Miss Hole I trust continues to apply to solid reading, and I hope does not suffer Music, elegant and pleasing as that talent is, to rob her of too much of her time, of which a fair proportion ought to be devoted, as I dare say it is, to better things I pray that she may get her religious principles so firmly rooted, that they may not be shaken by her commerce with the world hereafter.

I rejoyce at the favourable report you make of my dear old friend M^rs. Horne: when you see or write to her, pray assure her of my constant regard and present kind remembrances to your Sister.

In the intervals of sickness and other engagements I have been called upon to write a number of little papers and Tracts with a view to furnish some little antidote to the poison of disaffection and Sedition with which too many of the lower class are infected.^[2] I did not at first acknowledge myself the Author but I was found out. Seeing it could not be concealed I have now called them Cheap Repository Tracts. I have given them to Hatchard who will be glad to serve you with as much of these penny wares as you chuse; and pray recommend them to your friends for dispersion among the common people, the Songs are only three Shillings a hundred. New Tracts a penny /each/

If you see dear M^rs. Kennicott before I am able to write to her, give my [tear] to her and tell her that sickness and all this writing, have made me neglect the My friends, as far as outward attentions go, but I hope to mend my ways.