Dear Friend,
Your kind note of Dec. 4th I have received informing me that you had
obtained passage to this port for my children. They safely arrived
by the Castle Eden all in good health. They however left their box
of clothes behind at Plymouth and I have not as yet been able to get
any account of it. It appears to be lost, but as _they_ arrived safe
I do not care to trouble any one to enquire for this. The oldest girl
got married about five months since to a respectable young man a
tradesman, a pretty good match—the next boy is apprenticed six months
ago to the wheelwright business and the next boy is four months
apprenticed to a boot and shoemaker—the other the little one I have
myself. My own health is pretty good, and although times are rather
dull just now yet I hope that I shall find enough to do to keep along
with. Many ships have arrived here with emigrants and this for a
time causes rather more to be looking for situations than there are
situations to be filled, but most of them go into the country.
An orphan girl at Bathurst, to whom the Emigration Company granted a
free passage, writes thence to a lady in Ireland, ‘If in case any
emigrants were coming to Sydney, _to send me my little sisters which I
left at home_.’ Another sighs from ‘Patrick’s Plains, New South Wales,’
for another sister. In these cases, and in that of the wife of the good
fellow with the appetite, it seems to us that a society on the proposed
plan would do great service, and run little risk. Also in such an
instance as the following: