The pages are yellowed with age, and the “f” used in the place of the “s”, as well as the queer orthography and capitalisation, look strange to twentieth-century eyes, but on page 56 the lover-husband pleads with his lady in a way that we can well understand. [Pg 40] [Pg 40] The letter is dated “June 24, 1776,” and in part is as follows: “My Dearest Life and Love:— 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 unjust; may I not add, is most unkind. Have we lived, now 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 is alone 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 the most favorable to our happiness; but let us not, I beseech of you, make them worse by indulging suspicions and apprehensions which minds in distress are apt to give way to. “I never was, as you have often told me, even in my better and more disengaged days, so attentive to the little punctillios of friendship, as it may be, became me; but [Pg 41]my heart tells me, there never was a moment in my life, since I first knew you, in which it did not cleave and cling to you with the warmest affection; and it must cease to beat ere it can cease to wish for your happiness, above anything on earth. [Pg 41] “Your faithful and tender husband, G. W.” “Your faithful and tender husband, G. W.” “’Seventy-six!” The words bring a thrill even now, yet, in the midst of those stirring times, not a fortnight before the Declaration was signed, and after twenty years of marriage, he
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