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Thomas Stephen Powell Papers

出版	1847
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=a5n1ngEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Letter, 16 Jan. 1849, re a commission to paint another political banner: "Since I last wrote to you I have had to work on Sunday again, which was owing to the work being wanted by a certain time. It was a banner for the Sons of Temperance, and the ladies of the town made it; and as it was not made till 3 or 4 days previous to the time it was to be used, I was of necessity compelled to work on Sunday, or not have it finished in time, as the Society marched in procession to the Rome Baptist Church when addresses were delivered. This was on Christmas Day." William apparently had wished his elder brother "success in obtaining a wife" but Thomas was noncommittal in his reply: "I have no particular desire to get one ... As to my proficiency in becoming a ladies man, I am sorry to say that what with travelling about, attention to business, fondness for my own favorite pursuits &c. &c. I am, I believe, very little altered from what I was when you last saw me ... O brother, when I consider how vast is the knowledge & skill requisite to make a good painter, how feeble my powers, how shallow my attainments, is it surprising that my best efforts, my best affections & all my powers are more or less firmly bound together and concentrated upon this; and even then how feeble, how powerless I am!" Cholera, he wrote, was reportedly raging in New Orleans, New York, Montgomery, Alabama, and possibly as near as Columbus, Georgia, and Charleston, S.C. "Whether it be true of false, you cannot do better than live an orderly life, as I have often heard say that disease is more apt to thin the ranks of the vicious than of the moral, & by vicious, I mean those who indulge in drinking spirituous liquors, indulging with women, segar smoking, tobacco chewing, snuff taking, Intemperate eating, and irregularity in sleeping &c. &c."