Bagley, William, fl. 1842-1850
Your very affectionate letter of 10th ultimo
2
[has] been rec
d & contents noticed with no ordinary
degree of
pleasure
interest, [I w]as very glad indeed to hear from
you & to receive your very kind [adv]ice but notwithstanding all your
entreaties, I must say that [m]y purpose is fixed—as it were according to
the laws of the
Medes [&]
Persians
3. You
are right in supposing me unhappy but I don't think I am as much so as I was
last session; It would sound truly bad, I admit, for
the world to say that I came
to College but was
not able to graduate, but
Sis
,
such will not [be] the fact for every one who knows me, can testify that I have
at least sense enough to graduate at
Chapel Hill
.
I am well aware that the laurels of
Henry
Clay
were gained [b]y persevereing industry—that he was
once nothing but a null-boy &c;, but I am also
aware that he never went to college & if he had have gone he probably would
be no greater man than he now is, you seem to think that every thing depends on
my graduating,
but I feel assured that [I] can
be as smart as if I were to graduate & therefore adopted my present course,
it causes me much grief when I think that my friends will be dissatistfied
& I sometimes almost give myself up to despair but I hope I shall bear up
under every difficulty & at last come out victorious over every
foe.—I rec
d
Mr
Moore's letter last night which gave an account of several deaths &
a great deal of sickness, I am truly sorry that the "King of
Terrors" is laying waste our country at so great a rate & as I
have before stated in my letters home, I am almost in constant apprehensions
about the health of the family. Oh! what bitter pangs would take hold of me if
Death should sieze one of my dear friends & I be more than an hundred miles
off!! It has indeed carried some to their long home ever since I left
Willia[m]ston
4
& how many more it is likely to remove from all earthly scenes it is not
for us to determine, In thinkinking about it sometimes I wish—like
David—that I was there to die for them but such
cannot be the case, but if they must die I want to be [there], I can tell you,
My Dear
Sis
, that it is a source of great pain that I should be so
situated as to be comparatively free from the attacks of disease while the
family all the time are in bad [hea]lth, for if I am deprived of that little
family circle, there is nothing left on earth that is plea[sing] I should feel
like a "wanderer o'er earth's barren mountains" for they are all the
world to me & [though] I may be cast out of society, scoffed & sneered
at, still if I can find an asylum in the bosom of the [f]amily, all will be
well. Please write soon & give me all the news & let me know
especial[ly a]bout the health of all.