Brooklyn September 11, 1848

    Dear Miss

   Having been informed of your intimacy with Williamson Wyckoff I
have been induced to write you a few lines of caution.  If it is a
fact that you are keeping his company & permitting yourself in his
society, you are keeping the company of & associating with an
individual who no respectable person who knows him will or can
countenance or permit him in his or her society.  It has been
intimated that you and he are engaged to be married, suppose this to
be so you are then engaged to one who never could even support
himself & you must eventually (if you become his wife) suffer for
want.  You may be deceived from his appearances (mark!) it is not all
gold that glitters and although he supports a gold watch &
accoutrements &  drives a gay horse & wagon & covers his person with
broadcloth, the day is not far distant when the rightful owners of
all these gaieties will make their appearance. Neither will you be
justified in the belief that Williamson Wyckoff is worth any property
although he harps exceedingly upon his fathers estate (which is
involved in a course of litigation) which he with Garret A. Wyckoff &
Abraham A. Wyckoff through a nefarious course of villainy are
endeavoring to swindle the honest & just heirs out of, yet a most
glorious defeat awaits their vagrant acts.  You are now addressed by
a person who knows him, who knows his circumstances and who knows the
family pretty well and a word of caution bestowed in proper time and
duly appreciated will save you a great deal of misery in the future. 
He is already the father of at least one bastard which he had by a
servant girl living in his father's family and for which his father
kicked him from under his roof and then between two days he left Long
Island and sought shelter in Canada a prey upon the hospitalities of
his father's friends.  Banished and hissed by every mortal of respect
from his native place.  And now he seeks to palm himself off upon
some innocent and unoffending & respectable female. There is not one
redeeming quality in his character, he is a loafing vagrant without
any perceptible means of support and the only way he obtains his
bread is by spunging & stealing and if you persist in uniting
yourself with him you must censure yourself alone if you receive
nought but loooks of contempt & scorn from your friends and not say
you did not know him, for this is a timely warning bestowed in the
best faith that possibly can be bestowed by any mortal.

Yours with esteem,

a Friend