_Boston_, March 15th, 1840--Forenoon.
_Best-belovedest_,
Thy letter by Elizabeth came, I believe, on Thursday, and the two
which thou didst entrust to the post reached me not till
yesterday--whereby I enjoyed a double blessing in recompense of the
previous delay. Nevertheless, it were desirable that the new Salem
postmaster be forthwith ejected, for taking upon himself to withhold
the outpourings of thy heart, at their due season. As for letters of
business, which involve merely the gain or loss of a few thousand
dollars, let him be as careless as he pleases; but when thou wouldst
utter thyself to thy husband, dearest wife, there is doubtless a
peculiar fitness of thy communications to that point and phase of our
existence, at which they ought to be received. However, come when they
will, they are sure to make sweetest music with my heart-strings.
Blessedest, what an ugly day is this!--and there thou sittest as heavy
as thy husband's heart. And is his heart indeed heavy? Why no--it is
not heaviness--not the heaviness, like a great lump of ice, which I
used to feel when I was alone in the world--but--but--in short,
dearest, where thou art not, there it is a sort of death. A death,
however, in which there is still hope and assurance of a joyful life
to come. Methinks, if my spirit were not conscious of thy spirit, this
dreary snow-storm would chill me to torpor;--the warmth of my fireside
would be quite powerless to counteract it. Most absolute little wife,
didst thou expressly command me to go to Father Taylor's church this
very Sabbath?--(Dinner, or luncheon rather, has intervened since the
last sentence)--Now, belovedest, it would not be an auspicious day for
me to hear the aforesaid Son of Thunder. Thou knowest not how
difficult is thy husband to be touched or moved, unless time, and
circumstances, and his own inward state, be in a "concatenation
accordingly." A dreadful thing would it be, were Father Taylor to fail
in awakening a sympathy from my spirit to thine. Darlingest, pray let
me stay at home this afternoon. Some sunshiny Sunday, when I am wide
awake, and warm, and genial, I will go and throw myself open to his
blessed influences; but now, there is but one thing (thou being
absent) which I feel anywise inclined to do--and that is, to go to
sleep. May I go to sleep, belovedest? Think what sweet dreams of thee
may visit me--think how I shall escape this snow-storm--think how my
heavy mood will change, as the mood of mind almost always does, during
the interval that withdraws me from the external world. Yes; thou
bidst me sleep. Sleep thou too, my beloved--let us pass at one and the
same moment into that misty region, and embrace each other there.
Well, dearest, I have slept; but Sophie Hawthorne has been
naughty--she would not be dreamed about. And now that I am awake
again, here are the same snow-flakes in the air, that were descending
when I went to sleep. Would that there were an art of making sunshine!
Knowest thou any such art? Truly thou dost, my blessedest, and hast
often thrown a heavenly sunshine around thy husband's spirit, when all
things else were full of gloom. What a woe--what a cloud it is, to be
away from thee! How would my Dove like to have her husband continually
with her, twelve or fourteen months out of the next twenty? Would not
that be real happiness?--in such long communion, should we not feel as
if separation were a dream, something that never had been a reality,
nor ever could be? Yes; but--for in all earthly happiness there is a
but--but, during those twenty months, there would be two intervals of
three months each, when thy husband would be five hundred miles
away--as far away as Washington. That would be terrible. Would not
Sophie Hawthorne fight against it?--would not the Dove fold her wings,
not in the quietude of bliss, but of despair? Do not be frightened,
dearest--nor rejoiced either--for the thing will not be. It might be,
if I chose; but on multitudinous accounts, my present situation seems
preferable; and I do pray, that, in one year more, I may find some way
of escaping from this unblest Custom-House; for it is a very grievous
thraldom. I do detest all offices--all, at least, that are held on a
political tenure. And I want nothing to do with politicians--they are
not men; they cease to be men, in becoming politicians. Their hearts
wither away, and die out of their bodies. Their consciences are turned
to India-rubber--or to some substance as black as that, and which will
stretch as much. One thing, if no more, I have gained by my
Custom-House experience--to know a politician. It is a knowledge which
no previous thought, or power of sympathy, could have taught me,
because the animal, or the machine rather, is not in nature.
Oh my darlingest wife, thy husband's soul yearns to embrace thee! Thou
art his hope--his joy--he desires nothing but to be with thee, and to
toil for thee, and to make thee a happy wife, wherein would consist
his own heavenliest happiness. Dost thou love him? Yes; he knoweth it.
God bless thee, most beloved.