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Rh tember, is less explicit: “I am very glad to find that you are in better spirits than when you left us. Remember, I charge you that they be very good when we meet, which I hope will be soon.”

At a later date, another warm friend (the Rev. W. Jephson) is unable to sympathise with the sufferer: “We talk of you (with his sisters) like true lovers: begin generally by abusing, and assuredly end by praising you. Why will you not enjoy the affection that is lavished upon you, and manfully slight that which you cannot obtain or ought to scorn? No man, I verily believe, ever deserved the love of sisters more than you do, and I am certain no man ever possessed it more perfectly. And such sisters, my dearest Ned! But I have done with this. I never throw away the hope of seeing you one day or other think and act like yourself.”

His admiring friend Chetwood, who now understood his real position, writes in September 1771: “As to a part of your last letter I shall be silent, because I have some doubts whether this letter will arrive in Limerick by the time you propose leaving it. I cannot however resist my inclination to entreat that you will give me the solid satisfaction of informing me of the departure of to America as soon as you know it. I never wish that person to be in the same quarter of the globe with you; for as long as that is the case, I see plainly that you are not master of one atom of resolution.”

An eminent political friend, Mr. Denis Daly, of whom some account will hereafter appear, adverts