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Description
Will receive Kendrick but is a risk ----------? Not do for president of the College (with reasons). Complains of college responsibilities.
Date
1-21-1863
Keywords
letter, McIlvaine, Bedell, Kendrick, Kenyon College
Recommended Citation
McIlvaine, Charles Pettit, "Letter to Bishop Bedell" (1863). Charles Pettit McIlvaine Letters. 335.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/mcilvaine_letters/335
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Transcript
Cinc. Jan 21/63
My dear Bishop
Yours of the 19th came this Ev. I wrote yesterday. As to Kendrick, I take about the same view as you do, & probably [shall] receive him, but it is a [risk]. I do not doubt the sincerity of what he now professes, & I think there is favorable evidence of a new spirit in all the manner in which he has borne these enquiries. But he has a great deal to [beware].
As to a Pres, I do not think it worthwhile to think of [?]. No doubt he is scholar & christian enough, but he has been too long fastened to a narrow sphere & that at his native place, & seems to me too much of a recluse & too worried to be what we want, would he care which I have no idea he would.
As to going to N.Y., or the East, I am now [motionless] almost, out of pain only when as a certain posture. The gathering I suppose will discharge itself in a day or two, but such things have been following me another so continually for some months, that I know not what to expect when one is gone. I will want till next week to see. But I am the poorest hand in the world for such work. I cannot persuade in such a case. Besides, how can you ascertain if a man will accept. Must he take weeks to consider & am I to be there all that time & then if he at last declines, am I try another siege of weeks? I could not do it. I am too restless away from home & nothing to do, to bear it. To be hanging about in the East for weeks & weeks out of habit, feeling like an idler, for that I cannot [accept], under such circumstances, - it would be intolerable. I will think about it, but I don’t see the way clear. What a burden that College has been to me those 30 years. If you will go you shall.
Yours affectionately,
C.P.M.