The following letter from George Washington to his wife is a beautiful
example of love that was as fresh after twenty years as at the first, and
illustrates perfectly the sane balance of his great mind:
My Dearest Life and Love: You have hurt me, I know not how
much, by the insinuation in your last that my letters to you
have been less frequent because I have felt less concern for
you. The suspicion is most unkind. Have we lived almost a
score of years in the closest and dearest conjugal intimacy
to so little purpose that on the appearance only of
inattention to you, and which you might have accounted for
in a thousand ways more natural and more probable, you
should pitch upon that single motive which alone is
injurious to me?
I have not, I own, wrote so often to you as I wished and as
I ought, but think of my situation and then ask your heart
if I be without excuse. We are not, my dearest, in
circumstances most favorable to our happiness; but let us
not, I beseech you, idly make them worse by indulging in
suspicions and apprehensions which minds in distress are but
too apt to give way to. Your most faithful and tender
husband,