This has been a dull day to me. I waited the arrival of the post with
much solicitude and impatience, but his arrival made me more solicitous
still. "To be left at the Post Office," in your handwriting on the back
of a few lines from the Dr. was all that I could learn of you and my
little folks. If you were too busy to write, I hoped that some kind hand
would have been found to let me know something about you. Do my friends
think that I have been a politician so long as to have lost all feeling?
Do they suppose I have forgotten my wife and children? Or are they so
panic-struck with the loss of Canada as to be afraid to correspond with
me? Or have they forgotten that you have a husband, and your children a
father? What have I done, or omitted to do, that I should be thus
forgotten and neglected in the most tender and affecting scene of my
life? Don't mistake me. I don't blame you. Your time and thoughts must
have been wholly taken up with your own and your family's situation and
necessities; but twenty other persons might have informed me.
I suspect that you intended to have run slyly through the small-pox with
the family, without letting me know it, and then have sent me an account
that you were all well. This might be a kind intention, and if the
design had succeeded, would have made me very joyous. But the secret is
out, and I am left to conjecture. But as the faculty have this distemper
so much under command, I will flatter myself with the hope and
expectation of soon hearing of your recovery.