The uninterrupted and uncommon prosperity which has hitherto attended you makes this stroke doubly distressing. From your youth you seem to have enjoyed the peculiar care of Providence. Though early deprived of the watchful care of an excellent father, you found friends who almost supplied the place of a father; who not only provided for you bodily needs—but took care of your education; and I do not know that your advantages could have been greater, had your good father continued to live. And since you have become a man, and entered into that course of life which you were permitted to choose for yourself, I know of no one, in the same line, who has been more successful in his pursuits, or who has been able to conciliate more effectually the public favor. Indeed, until this sad event in a moment dashed the cup of worldly prosperity, you might be said to have been like a favorite child, dandled on the knee, and exposed to no crude blasts of adversity.