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The Philander Chase letters were written in the 18th and 19th century and therefore may contain language that we understand today as harmful or offensive. You may encounter paternalist descriptions of Native Americans, racial slurs, or sexism. For more information, see our policy page.
Description
Philander Chase summarizes his new edition of the Motto about the worshipers of Mammon.
Date
12-29-1849
Keywords
Philander Chase, Laura Chase, Sophia Chase, Susan Chase, labor, childbirth, health, illness, sickness, theology, Motto, scripture, Mammon
Recommended Citation
Chase, Philander, "Letter to Laura Chase" (1849). Philander Chase Letters. 1346.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/chase_letters/1346
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Transcript
Dear Laura;
I believe you are in debt to me for a letter or two: but, as I grow older and older, my epistolary accounts are not kept with so much accuracy as they used to be. But it is no matter. My love for you makes amends for all informality.
I am now here at home in the Cottage all alone: and I want to talk with those most dear to me tho’ at a distance. How are you, & your pretty nosegay of Laural[sic] leaves and sweet blossoms?
A blessed Christmas and New Year to you all. Pray tell me in a long letter. What do your [pratlers] say? What amuses them the most? As for your good Husband I must entreat you not to be silent about him: for if you do not tell me I might as well bid adieu to the sweet hope of hearing from him ever if you do not tell me whether he be dead or alive what shall I do?
But you will ask me how comes it to pass that I am here alone? Because my dear Wife your grand Mother is gone over to stay day and night with poor Susan now very ill. We had good reason to hope that after giving us another fine daughter she would herself recover of her severe illness. But God hath seen fit to afflict her weak and tender frame with neuralgic pains--especially in her face, calling forth the sympathy of all of us: all all feel for her; and her aunt my dear Wife must be constantly with her.
Her two little Boys Frank and Dudley are now asleep by me while I write this letter. In the day time they attend school in a dear little building which last fall was put up among the trees across the road near your Uncle Dudleys residence. It is designed for the little Children taught by Miss Elizabeth Wilkinson one of our most esteemed communicants. Your nephew Alexander Wells Chase goes to it; and Philanders Alice and a number of others
I sent you the 10th No. of our Motto lately and I hope you have found time to read it because it is mostly written by your aged Grand Father. Some if it [tracts] of our great loss by the burning of our mills & there are hopes it will call forth from our brother Churchmen some means to raise us from our present depression. But we live in an age when Mammon reigns: and little can be expected but from such as have renounced him in truth as well as by profession--and these I find by sad experience are few & far-between. All others hoard together as the swine about Gadara ready to receive the Legion causing them to perish without a remedy.
It is said that the Gadarenes when they [saw] their property & means of worldly wealth impinged on came out of their City and besought the blessed Saviour who had just cured the maniac to deprat out their coasts While Jesus maintained himself and did not apply to them for aid in preaching his heavenly gospel, these worldlings had nothing to say; but when they found that they mist give up their God Mammon then they joined as one man to expel him from their borders.
Have not these examples been acted over again by the members of our communion? And now I see it more than ever I saw it before How painful is this truth to the heart of one who all his life hath striven lengthen the cords to strengthen the stakes of the Tabern[acle] of God in the wilderness? Your loving grand Father
Phil’r Chase