I received your very pleasant & agreeable letter & was very glad to hear that you were so well satisfied with Schocco. I also with the single exception of my sleeping apparatus & am probably as well fixed as any other person. I have great good luck in being with such clever & steady young men as Walker Anderson & George Johnston. They are both extremely kind & attentive to me. George Bryan also is very kind but with all that I don't like the place half so much as West Point but I don't mean to say that I am dissatisfied with it on the contrary I like it much better than I thought I would. I room about half a mile fromthe college & do not hear much of the noise which a person rooming there has to put up with. I think that this place is fast improving & in point of dissipation the faculty are trying to put it down as much as possible & I hear that they caught twenty students last night either drunk or with liquor in their possesion. I should think that, if the trustees would make it incumbent on the faculty to expel every student who was caught in that state & have it carried out, they would soon have this college equal if not superior to the university of Virginia which stands second only to West Point. Two or three days ago we had a heavy storm & ever since the weather has been cool & delightful so cool indeed that it reminds ofthe near approach of autumn & of the consequent near approach of myself to Thornbury. I study mathematics in the Soph & senior class in order to get along faster. I also study french in two class for the same purpose the two classes aforesaid being soph. & Junior. C'est a dire the two classes that I study french in those with my latin & chemistry occupy almost my entire time. What little there is left & there is none but on Saturday & Sunday I employ either in reading or writing. When you write tell me all about your intentions & prospects. I suppose that you will not remain at Schocco more than a week longer that will bring you to the 1st of September & I haveno doubt but that you will be very desirous of retiring to the plantation by that period. I suppose that I can leave here by the 25th of November a little over three months from now. You must tell me whether Wilkins Brucewas as devoted to Maria at Schoccoas at Weldon. He has a bro. in the soph. class & in my section but [unrecovered] the latter is as fat as the goddess of mischief was before the fall of man when she had nothing to do but sit down & mope. Tell Maria she must write me soon. Give my love to all. Write me also s'il vous plait about plantation news & so forth.