ough the year. Richard can find a place here if he will, and Edwards
can come on and be _Bishop_ or _President_ or _Professor_ in some of the
colleges (for I can't think of him in a less character) after he has
graduated.

"I wish seriously you would think of this. Your friends here would
greatly rejoice and an opening could be found, I have no doubt.
Christians want their hands strengthened, and a veteran soldier, like
papa, might be of great service here in the infancy of the _Unitarian
Hydra_, who finds a population too well adapted to receive and cherish
its easy and fascinating tenets."

All this refers to a movement organized by the enemies of Dr. Morse to
oust him from his parish in Charlestown. He was a militant fighter for
orthodoxy and an uncompromising foe to Unitarianism, which was gradually
obtaining the ascendancy in and near Boston. The movement was finally
successful, as we shall see later, but they did not go as far from their
old haunts as Charleston.

I shall not attempt to argue the rights and wrongs of the case, which
seem to have been rather complicated, for Dr. Morse, more than a year
after this, in writing to a friend says: "The events of the last fifteen
months are still involved in impenetrable mystery, which I doubt not will
be unravelled in due time."

The winter and spring of 1819 were spent by the young couple both
pleasantly and profitably in Charleston. The best society of that
charming city opened its arms to them and orders flowed in in a steady
stream. Mr. John A. Alston was a most generous patron, ordering many
portraits of his children and friends, and sometimes insisting on paying
the young man even more than the price agreed upon.

In a letter to Morse he says: "Which of my friends was it who lately
observed to you that I had a picture mania? You made, I understand, a
most excellent reply, 'You wished I would come to town, then, and bite a
dozen.' Indeed, my very good sir, was it in my power to excite in them a
just admiration of your talents, I would readily come to town and bite
the whole community."

And in another letter of April 10, 1819, Mr. Alston says: "Your portrait
of my daughter was left in Georgetown [South Carolina], at the house of a
friend; nearly all of the citizens have seen it, and I really think it
will occasion you some applications.... Every one thought himself at
liberty to make remarks. Some declared it to be a good likeness, while
others insisted it w