Philadelphia, 8 July, 1777.
Yours of 23d June I have received. I believe there is no danger of an
invasion your way, but the designs of the enemy are uncertain, and their
motions a little mysterious. Before this letter is sealed, which will
not be till Sunday next, I hope I shall be able to inform you better.
I rejoice at your fine season and at my brother Cranch's attention to
husbandry. I am very glad he bought the farm and that he likes it so
well. I pant for domestic life and rural felicity like his. I am better
than I have been. But I dread the heats which are coming on. This day
completes six months since I left you. I am wasted and exhausted in mind
and body, with incessant application to business, but, if I can possibly
endure it, will hold out the year. It is nonsense to dance backwards and
forwards. After this year, I shall take my leave.
Our affairs are in a fine, prosperous train, and if they continue so, I
can leave this station with honor. Next month completes three years that
I have been devoted to the service of liberty. A slavery it has been to
me, whatever the world may think of it. To a man whose attachments to
his family are as strong as mine, absence alone from such a wife and
such children would be a great sacrifice. But in addition to this
separation what have I not done? What have I not suffered? What have I
not hazarded? These are questions that I may ask you, but I will ask
such questions of none else. Let the cymbals of popularity tinkle still.
Let the butterflies of fame glitter with their wings. I shall envy
neither their music nor their colors. The loss of property affects me
little. All other hard things I despise, but the loss of your company
and that of my dear babes, for so long a time, I consider as a loss of
so much solid happiness. The tender social feelings of my heart, which
have distressed me beyond all utterance in my most busy, active scenes,
as well as in the numerous hours of melancholy solitude, are known only
to God and my own soul.
How often have I seen my dearest friend a widow, and her charming
prattlers orphans exposed to all the insolence of unfeeling, impious
tyrants! Yet I can appeal to my final Judge, the horrid vision has never
for one moment shaken the resolution of my heart.