Letters from the West Author:James A. Hall, John T. Flanagan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER III. WHEELING, AND THE CUMBERLAND ROAD. Dear N. The promises of friendship, like those of love, are often carelessly made, and lightly broken. We... more » are ready to concede any thing to the entreaty of one we love, without reflecting how many little contingencies may interfere with the engagement. Our hearts are indeed but bad economists, and are apt to make liberal promises, which we have neither the ability nor the inclination to fulfil. Thus it is that the last request of a friend, which at parting vibrates feelingly on the ear, and entwines itself among our warmest sympathies, is often obliterated by the pains or pleasures of new scenes and novel avocations. My pledge to you, however, was of such a nature as not tobe so easily forgotten. Dearly as I love to lounge away the passing hours, I should feel highly culpable could I forget for a moment that you have a claim to part of them; and independently of this incentive, I assure you that the pleasure I shall experience in participating my sentiments with one so able to appreciate them, will more than compensate me for the labour of making up the record. But for these reflections, believe me, my last long epistle would have exhausted my patience, as I dare say it has yours, and I should never have had the temerity to attempt another. But I have promised to write my travels, and you are doomed to read them. I left Pittsburgh in a keel boat of about forty-five tons burthen, laden with merchandfee, and navigated by eight or ten of those " half- horse and half-alligator" gentry, commonly called Ohio boatmen, whose coarse drollery, I foresee already, will afford us some amusement. There is a small cabin in the stern of the boat, which is occupied by two females—not high born damsels, nor yet young nor lovely ; one is the...« less