ent to employ me for some years to come."

He returned to Charleston in the fall of 1820 and was again compelled to
go alone. He writes to his wife on December 27: "I feel the separation
this time more than ever, and I felt the other day, when I saw the
steamship start for New York, that I had almost a mind to return in her."

From this sentence we learn that the slow schooner of the preceding years
had been supplanted by the more rapid steamship, but that is,
unfortunately, all he has to say of this great step forward in human
progress.

Further on in this same letter he says: "I am occupied fully so that I
have no reason to complain. I have not a _press_ like the first season or
like the last, but still I can say I am all the time employed.... My
President pleases very much; I have heard no dissatisfaction expressed.
It is placed in the great Hall in a fine light and place.... Mrs. Ball
wants some alterations, that is to say every five minutes she would like
it to be different. She is the most unreasonable of all mortals;
derangement is her only apology. I can't tell you all in a letter, must
wait till I see you. I shall get the rest of the cash from her shortly."

Just at this time the wave of prosperity on which the young man had so
long floated, began to subside, for he writes to his wife on January 28,
1821:--

"I wish I could write encouragingly as to my professional pursuits, but I
cannot. Notwithstanding the diminished price and the increase of exertion
to please, and although I am conscious of painting much better portraits
than formerly (which, indeed, stands to reason if I make continual
exertion to improve), yet with all I receive no new commissions, cold and
procrastinating answers from those to whom I write and who had put their
names on my list. I give less satisfaction to those whom I have painted;
I receive less attention also from some of those who formerly paid me
much attention, and none at all from most."

But with his usual hopefulness he says later on in this letter:--

"Why should I expect my sky to be perpetually unclouded, my sun to be
never obscured? I have thus far enjoyed more of the sunshine of
prosperity than most of my fellow men. 'Shall I receive good at the hands
of the Lord and shall I not also receive evil?'"

In this letter, a very long one, he suggests the establishment of an
academy or school of painting in New Haven, so that he may be enabled to
live at home with his fami