Qualifications of Aides and Secretaries, Etc.: Page #2

Transcription

[S-11-276]

Mount Vernon 29 July 1798

[52]

Dear Sir

Your letter of the 25 instant came to Alexandria yesterday evening and was put into my hands this morn.

For the rules and regulations accompanying it I thank you and will read them attentively if I am allowed time, but this is questionable as I am assailed from all quarters and by all descriptions of people for commissions, Introductions, recommendations & to all of which common civility makes some sort of reply necessary while among them there are a few to whom more particular answers must be given.

This leads me to ask whether a Secretary previous to the contingencies on which my taking the field is placed with be allowed? The pay I mean, without which the moments which are employed in my usual necessary avocations and which at all leisure hours I have been devoting to the management and overhaul of my voluminous public papers, civil and military that they may gain to secure deposits, and hereafter into hands that may be able to separate the grain from the chaff. I say without this aid my time (and in truth I had from a variety of causes which it is needless to enumerate little of enough of before) will be entirely taken up by personal worth and written application.

[MSA SO 1407-1-46]