She afterwards read, approved, and for some time had in her hands the
paper I drew up from them.
It consisted of notices of, and extracts from these original letters,
the matter being abridged, connecting links used, and omissions made
where the great author himself marked them private or from parts
otherwise not necessary to go before the world. So guarded and prepared,
and with a commentary interwoven, Mrs. Lear left its publication to my
discretion. I returned the original letters, in number more than thirty,
in the state I received them from her. I never allowed any one of them
to be copied; but gave one away, or two, for I am not at this day
certain which, to Mr. Polk while he was President of the United States,
having first asked and obtained Mrs. Lear's consent for that purpose.
She also gave me two of them not very long before her decease, which I
prize the more as her gift. I have other original letters from the same
immortal source, the valued donation in 1830, of the son of Colonel
Lear, Lincoln Lear, Esquire.
This excellent lady, who long honored me with her friendship and
confidence in the above and other ways, after surviving Colonel Lear
forty years, died last December in Washington. There she had continued
to live as his widow; being all this time in possession of, and as I
supposed owning, these original letters. There she lived, beloved as a
pattern of the Christian virtues, and enjoying the esteem of the circle
around her as an interesting relict of days becoming historical; but
ever elevating in the associations they recall.
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