1.  You will hardly believe what I am about to write, but it must be written for truth’s sake.  I have been very anxious to communicate as often as possible with your excellency, but when I got this opportunity of writing a letter I did not at once seize the lucky chance.  I hesitated and hung back.  What is astonishing is, that when I got what I had been praying for, I did not take it.  The reason of this is that I am really ashamed to write to you every time, not out of pure friendship, but with the object of getting something.  But then I bethought me (and when you consider it, I do hope you will not think that I communicate with you more for the sake of a bargain than of friendship) that there must be a difference between the way in which one approaches a magistrate and a private man.  We do not accost a physician as we do any mere nobody; nor a magistrate as we do a private individual.  We try to get some advantage from the skill of the one and the position of the other.  Walk in the sun, and your shadow will follow you, whether you will or not.  Just so intercourse with the great is followed by an inevitable gain, the succour of the distressed.  The first object of my letter is fulfilled in my being able to greet your excellency.  Really, if I had no other cause for writing at all, this must be regarded as an excellent topic.  Be greeted then, my dear Sir; may you be preserved by all the world while you fill office after office, and succour now some now others by your authority.  Such greeting I am wont to make; such greeting is only due to you from all who have had the least experience of your goodness in your administration.