[A letter from Dr. Matthias Fruhling, of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, to his wife]

Boston
March 10^th, 1768

My dear Joan —

The packet-boat from New-York hath deposited me at long last upon Boston wharves; and now, being arrived at Mr. Gitney’s establishment, I am like to remain for some weeks before I take my passage to Calais.

Heartily do I wish thou couldst see this household — its freaks and pranks and glories. The knowledge enshrined here is most luminous; but the extravagance is wearying, an outrage to God and man, especially when set amidst so pious a town, where the most finical youth buys his fopperies in brown and gray; and where, when a man whistles upon the street, it is a tune from Ainsworth’s psalter.

Notwithstanding the noxious luxury of the College, I spent a most gratifying day in converse with the philosophers of this place before we set forth on a bold experiment: Inviting a gentleman to stand atop a platform of rosin, we electrified him, observing how pieces of gold-leaf he held upon a copper tray flew up to the fingertips of a man not yet imbricated by charge. Following this gratifying assay, we being shod in clogs of wax, a battery discharged shocks through wands we held and motivated metal filings, as we sought to determine whether the particles of electro-ætherial flux were, in shape, triangular or lozenge.

In the evening, Mr. Gitney — who insists that we enumerate him 03-01 — held some fashion of levee for the Boston nobility, which hath lasted us near till dawn with music and a coati-mundi and another display of electrical virtue which tickled my palms and burnt my eyelashes to a frizzle. Chief among the pleasures was a most ravishing Negress, a Princess of Africa, who presided over the evening with a curious baton, like a Queen of the Djinns. Sigh not for jealousy, Mrs. Fruhling — she cast no eye upon me, and I made no overtures to that imperious individual, being of far too plain and low a stature for Her Highness.

Late in the evening, they arranged for her son, a solemn little article of eight or ten years old, to play the violin with his music-master and others in consort. He is a beanpole of a boy. Thou hast not heard fiddling, Joan, until thou hast heard this tiny being, legs thin as sumac twigs, produce such tones; which sweet music dazzled not merely in its display of speed and accuracy, but most in its gravity; the child being able to introduce an element of melancholy into even the liveliest of passages.

Of the glittering and outrageous train of that house, he was the least conspicuous; being dressed in dark, rich satins, and perpetually silent; and yet, among them all, amidst the revelry and the obscene antics of the poets and the coati-mundi, it was he who was the wonder; I would liefer speak to this boy for fifteen minutes than to some of their prating, babbling, atheistical horde for five hours together. I found an opportunity to exchange some words with him, the others rushing out into the yard, waxen clogs a-thumping, to place bets upon a battle royal between a mongoose and an asp.

I wish thou couldst have spoken to the child, as thou hadst drawn him out and set him at his ease; to me, he was civil, but so overwhelmed in humility he could barely converse. Howsoever humble he might be, a curious thing: When I looked upon him and spake with him, he would not meet my eyes with his; he stared fixedly at some point, and made his addresses as if to the air; but when no one looked upon him, he gazed upon us all with almost a hungriness in his assessment; as if memorizing the details of our dress and carriage and conversation; and chipping it unsmiling upon tablets so it might later be used to damn us at the end of Time, or at least explain us to some other Intelligence come after us.

I could not but think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, shortly to be consigned to the blast-furnaces of Nebuchadnezzar — captive “children in whom was no blemish, but well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability to stand in the King’s palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans.”

Well might thou wonder how this vain household may continue in its expense and luxurious operations. I gained some little view of its financial arrangements when, late in the evening, Mr. Gitney asked me to consider a proposition; that he and his fellow Gitneys are joining with a consortium of Virginian gentlemen to purchase vast quantities of land from the Indians; which property they shall, once they own it, split up into smaller parcels and sell at profit to men of the middling sort wishing to head West.

I protested that making such purchases with the Indians, Parliament has disallowed in the strongest of terms; that we have been rebuked for annoying the Savages with our invasions and broken treaties; and to recall the heathen Pontiac, his terrible revenge; that we have late fought a war with the Savages over just such encroachments; and that the unfortunates who purchased said lots were likely, within two years, to succumb to massacre and retribution.

He rallied me upon my cowardice, and said that Parliament should never enforce their strictures against settling upon Indian territory; that property was property, and he was purchasing the land openly and without prejudice; that Americans should not be thwarted by the laws of ancient aristocracies, corrupt dukes, self-styled marquises and thanes; and that a friend in Philadelphia should be a great boon to the project, there being some animosity between Pennsylvania and Virginia in this matter.

Well canst thou imagine that I could not hazard our little portion on such a dangerous business, which venture can end only in financial ruin and the destruction of Christians by heathen tomahawk and the tricks of barbarous Deviltry. I should not be sorry, did the Lord sweep the savages further to the west; but I doubt His divine will shall ever be expressed through Virginians. They are not his especial people. Thus, Mrs. Fruhling, I joined no consortium, being content merely to observe the experiments here and engage in dispute about the nature of air.

I must retire from the scritoire; the frolic is over. It is now almost breakfast-time, the mongoose is being buried with full Catholic rites, and it appears Mrs. Ogilvy hath broken her jaw. She was, I fear, unaccustomed to waxen clogs.

I shall find a house of prayer as very soon as I can quit this place, so that I may remain

Thy devout and loving husband,
Matthias F.