★ Keep up to date with the latest news - subscribe to the Transcribe Bentham newsletter; Find a new page to transcribe in our list of Untranscribed Manuscripts
We have just now past Woolwich which is the last place in the River till we come to Gravesend the
appearance of which is connected with any idea interesting ideas. As we shall probably stop come to anchor abo
6 hours somewhere near Gravesend I will send you a bit of a letter from thence. Wherever we come to anc
our Skipper must go ashore at the Custom house at Gravesend, and I must go with him to procure so
provision or starve. You left me so suddenly that we had no opportunity of speaking any of those
kind of speeches to each other which could have answered no purpose but that of furnishing us both with
such a set of melencholly ideas as er might not for a long time have gotten rid of. It is now so little a time sin
we parted that the Idea of the probability of our not seeing one another for so long a time had affected me
ry little and I hope we shall both neither suffer much on your this account. We have long intended to
part on some such occasion an but never could have the expectations of circumstances favoring us so much.
could I only know that you eat your breakfast & drink your tea tollerably comfortably without me I could
be no otherwise than happy myself, for The variety of objects which must necessarily engage my attention w
give me no time to be une long uneasy on any account. If I meet with a disappointment in one plan
I have another to turn to and a happy memory that will soon put the unsuccessful one out of the way.
Well but you shall have no more such general reflections for your amusements. I must begin to get
into a habit of giving you some idea of my circu present circumstances. and first a circumstance that
plagues me a good deal is the evaporation of the ink from my pen. I am writing on deck in the open
air with my silver pen some ink my Skipper has furnished me with which I am obliged to
nd for in a pint stone bottle. this is an operation which requires a great exertion of Philosophical
knowledge especially when celerity is a principal property required in the operation owing to its being
necessary to repeat it almost every half minute. My letter case on my knee serves me as a table
and the left hand I am obliged to imploy to keep the wind from blowing up my paper and at the same
to hide what I write from the eyes of my fellow passengers. The Gentleman of a fellow
passenger which whom we took notice of as being of the superior cast if he is a Jew has taken some pains to
prevent my thinking him so for he speaks of the rest of our companions with some marks of tdt
detestation all under the name of Jews although I would answer for it some of them are as good German
Christians as himself. The This man has been happy enough to find occasion to tell me what a fine
mechanical head he has. He has found out since he has been on board the vessel the use of the Cuboards
and he would have been pretty right in his Theory had he not attributed the whole of the effect to
the one of the two which can scarcely be said to have any. He has been telling what astonishing
arts Navigation & Shipbuilding are, and how astonishing every thing whatever is provided always that
as soon as he had learnt to do anything it was no longer at all extraordinary. As soon as he
had made a suitable number of such reflections all of which he was very free to communicate he
left me to make some of my own. He is the only Cabbin passenger besides myself and as he is
tollerably clean, and has a tollerable pleasant countenance and seems disposed to make fair weather
we shall I dare say agree very well together. I wish the air would but take up into itself
the solid as well as the fluid part of the Ink: but it is dainty it leaves the dregs behind.
This Page Has Not Been Transcribed Yet
|
Identifier: | JB/538/359/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 538.
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
1779-08-25 |
|||
|
538 |
|||
|
359 |
|||
|
001 |
|||
|
Correspondence |
|||
|
Samuel Bentham |
|||