_Custom-House_, April 6th, 1840. 5 P.M.
How long it is, belovedest, since I have written thee a letter from
this darksome region. Never did I write thee a word from hence that
was worth reading, nor shall I now; but perhaps thou wouldst get no
word at all, these two or three days, unless I write it here. This
evening, dearest, I am to have a visitor--the illustrious Colonel Hall
himself; and I have even promised him a bed on my parlor floor--so
that, as thou seest, the duties of hospitality will keep me from
communion with the best little wife in the world.
Hearts never do understand the mystery of separation--that is the
business of the head. My sweetest, dearest, purest, holiest, noblest,
faithfullest wife, dost thou know what a loving husband thou hast?
Dost thou love him most immensely?--beyond conception, and dost thou
feel, as he does, that every new throb of love is worth all other
happiness in the world?
Dearest, my soul drank thy letter this forenoon, and has been
conscious of it ever since, in the midst of business and noise and all
sorts of wearisome babble. How dreamlike it makes all my external
life, this continual thought and deepest, inmostest musing upon thee!
I live only within myself; for thou art always there. Thou makest me a
disembodied spirit; and with the eve of a spirit, I look on all
worldly things--and this it [is] that separates thy husband from those
who seem to be his fellows--therefore is he "among them, but not of
them." Thou art transfused into his heart, and spread all round about
it; and it is only once in a while that he himself is even imperfectly
conscious of what a miracle has been wrought upon him.
Well, dearest, were ever such words as these written in a Custom-House
before? Oh, and what a mighty heave my heart has given, this very
moment! Thou art most assuredly thinking of me now, wife of my inmost
bosom. Never did I know what love was before--I did not even know it
when I began this letter. Ah, but I ought not to say that; it would
make me sad to believe that I had not always loved thee. Farewell,
now, dearest. Be quiet, my Dove; lest my heart be made to flutter by
the fluttering of thy wings.
April 7th. 6 P.M. My tenderest Dove, hast thou lived through the polar
winter of to-day; for it does appear to me to have been the most
uncomfortable day that ever was inflicted on poor mortals. Thy husband
has had to face it in all its terrors; and the cold has penetrated
through his cloak, through his beaver-cloth coat and vest, and was
neutralised nowhere but in the region round about his heart--and that
it did not chill him even there, he owes to thee. I know not whether I
should not have jumped overboard in despair today, if I had not
sustained my spirit by the thought of thee, most beloved wife; for,
besides the bleak, unkindly air, I have been plagued by two sets of
coal-shovellers at the same time, and have had to keep two separate
tallies simultaneously. But, dearest, I was conscious that all this
was merely a vision and a phantasy, and that, in reality, I was not
half-frozen by the bitter blast, nor plagued to death by those grimy
coal-heavers, but that I was basking quietly in the sunshine of
eternity, with mine own Dove. Any sort of bodily and earthly torment
may serve to make us sensible that we have a soul that is not within
the jurisdiction of such shadowy demons--it separates the immortal
within us from the mortal. But the wind has blown my brain into such
confusion that I cannot philosophise now.
Blessingest wife, what a habit I have contracted of late, of telling
thee all my grievances and annoyances, as if such trifles were worth
telling--or as if, supposing them to be so, they would be the most
agreeable gossip in the world to thee. Thou makest me behave like a
child, naughtiest. Why dost thou not frown at my nonsensical
complaints, and utterly refuse thy sympathy? But I speak to thee of
the miseries of a cold day, and blustering wind, and intractable
coal-shovellers, with just the same certainty that thou wilt listen
lovingly and sympathisingly, as if I were speaking of the momentous
and permanent concerns of life.