Mount Vernon, January 31, 1799.

    Dear Sir: Into what channel you put your letter of the 7th of November⁷⁰ is not for me to say but this I can add that it never came to my hands until the 13th instant: When if you had put it into any Post Office it would have been received at this place in 3 or 4 days and whilst I was in Phila in 3 or 4 days more.

[Note:Not now found in the Washington Papers . ]

    It is of little avail to investigate now what has produced the difficulties and distresses into which your fathers affairs and your own have gone; things passed may be regretted but can never be recalled.

    At the time I wrote to your Mother ⁷¹ I had as I thought a moral certainty of receiving several thousand dollars for Lands which I had sold West of the Allegany Mountains and although I had urgent call for the money myself I had resolved that those evils which she seemed to apprehend should not come upon her if a $1000 would prevent it; but so far from receiving several thousand dollars as I expected I have not received one on the account of land sold. Yet notwithstanding this had she drawn as she was authorized to do, I would, rather than have been worse than I had promised to be, have borrowed the money at the Bank of Alexandria at the ruinous interest at which it is loaned.

[Note:Mildred Thornton, wife of Charles Washington. No copy of this letter is now found in the Washington Papers . ( Cf . Washington's letter to Samuel Washington, July 12, 1797, vol. 35, ante .) ]