My valued mother became intimately acquainted with my father in the summer of 1797. No record of this event appears in her journal. It is evident that till 1799 she kept no regular account of herself, except noting her thoughts and feelings on loose sheets of paper, in a short-hand of her own. After the death of my inestimable father she copied the whole in regular order till the above-named period; and it is supposed the remembrance of her bereavement was too vividly before her to permit her to continue this writing, therefore she deferred it to a season of calmer resignation. Probably the care of her infant, and afterwards a scene of more active exertion, caused her never to make up this blank in her journal.

Extracts from the letters which passed between my beloved parents at this interval may help to make up the deficiency.