From a tender Father to an ungracious Son.

Son John,

I am under no small Concern, that your continued ill Courses give me Occasion to write this Letter to you. I was in hopes, that your solemn Promises of Amendment might have been better depended on; but I see, to my great Mortification, that all I have done for you, and all I have said to you, is thrown away. What can I say more than I have said? Yet, once more am I desirous to try what the Force of a Letter will do with one who has not suffer’d mere Words to have any Effect upon him. Perhaps this remaining with you, if you will now and then seriously peruse it, may, in some happy Moment, give you Reflection, and by God's Grace, bring on your Repentance and Amendment.

Consider then, I beseech you, in time, the Evil of your Ways. Make my Case your own; and think, if you were to be Father of such a Son, how his Actions would grieve and afflict you.But if my Comfort has no Weightwith you, consider, my Son, how your present Courses must impair, in time, a good Constitution, destroy your Health, and, most probably, shorten your Life. Consider that your Reputation is wounded, I hope, not mortally, as yet. That you will be ranked among the Profligate and Outcasts of the World; that no virtuous Man will keep you Company; that every one who has a Regard for his own Credit will shun you; and that you will be given up to the Society of the worst and most abandon’d of Men, when you might be improved by the Examples of the Best. That no Family which values their own Honour, and the Welfare of their Child, will suffer your Addresses to a Daughter worthy of being sought after for a Wife, should you incline to marry; and that the worst of that Sex must probably, in that Case, fall to your Lot, which will make you miserable in this World, when you might be happy.