present summer." On the 24th of June, his disorder and weakness having reached a distressing point, he yielded to the entreaties of his family and saw his physician, Dr. Dunglison of the university. On this occasion he warned a friend who came to see him on private business that "there was no time to be lost," and expressed with regret his only apprehension that "he could not hold out to see the blessed Fourth of July," that he had called in a physician and to gratify his family would follow his prescriptions, but that it would prove unavailing: the machine had worn out and would go on no longer. On the same day, he addressed that most remarkable letter to the mayor of Washington, copies of which, elegantly printed and framed, adorned the mantelpieces of many of the private dwellings in that city and the walls of its public edifices. This was the last letter he ever wrote, and surely none was better fitted to be the last. "RESPECTED SIR, -- The kind invitation I receive from you on the part of thecitizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their celebration onthe fiftieth anniversary of American Independence as one of the surviving signers of an instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world, is mostflattering to myself, and heightened by the honorable accompaniment proposedfor the comfort of such a journey. It adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness,to be deprived by it of a personal participation in the rejoicings of that day. Butacquiescence is a duty under circumstances not placed among those we arepermitted to control. I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met andexchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant ofthat host of worthies, who joined with us on that day in the bold and doubtfulelection we were to make for our country between submission or the sword; andto have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact that our fellow citizens, after h...
