Since I wrote the foregoing, I have not been able to find time to write
you a line. Although I cannot write you so often as I wish, you are
never out of my thoughts. I am repining at my hard lot in being torn
from you much oftener than I ought. I have often mentioned to you the
multiplicity of my engagements, and have been once exposed to the
ridicule and censure of the world for mentioning the great importance of
the business which lay upon me; and if this letter should ever see the
light, it would be again imputed to vanity that I mention to you how
busy I am. But I must repeat it by way of apology for not writing you
oftener. From four o'clock in the morning until ten at night, I have not
a single moment which I can call my own. I will not say that I expect to
run distracted, to grow melancholy, to drop in an apoplexy, or fall into
a consumption; but I do say, it is little less than a miracle that one
or other of these misfortunes has not befallen me before now.
Your favors of 15th, 20th, and 23d September are now before me. Every
line from you gives me inexpressible pleasure, but it is a great grief
to me that I can write no oftener to you. There is one thing which
excites my utmost indignation and contempt. I mean the brutality with
which people talk to you of my death. I beg you would openly affront
every man, woman, or child, for the future, who mentions any such thing
to you, except your relations and friends, whose affections you cannot
doubt. I expect it of all my friends, that they resent, as affronts to
me, every repetition of such reports.
I shall inclose to you Governor Livingston's speech; the most elegant
and masterly ever made in America. Depend upon it, the enemy cannot cut
off the communication. I can come home when I will. They have New York,
and this is their _ne plus ultra_.