'T is ten days, I believe, since I wrote you a line, yet not ten minutes
pass without thinking of you. 'T is four months wanting three days since
we parted. Every day of the time I have mourned the absence of my
friend, and felt a vacancy in my heart which nothing, nothing can
supply. In vain the spring blooms or the birds sing. Their music has not
its former melody, nor the spring its usual pleasures. I look around
with a melancholy delight and sigh for my absent partner. I fancy I see
you worn down with cares, fatigued with business, and solitary amidst a
multitude.
And I think it probable before this reaches you that you may be driven
from the city by our barbarous and hostile foes, and the city sharing
the fate of Charlestown and Falmouth, Norfolk and Danbury. So vague and
uncertain are the accounts with regard to the latter, that I shall not
pretend to mention them. 'T is more than a week since the event, yet we
have no accounts which can be depended upon. I wish it may serve the
valuable purpose of arousing our degenerated countrymen from that state
of security and torpitude into which they seem to be sunk.