University of Virginia Library

I again resume my sweet correspondence with you, after an interval it
seems to me of an age: computed by what I have (may I not say we have)
suffered. But during all my unexampled difficulties and trials, one constant
soarce of consolation remained to me. It was your steady constancy. It is
true, that for a time, I was laboring under a delusion in regard to it, but even
during that time, you were as unwavering as before. No portion of blame
can attach to you, that I was led astray. You, my Ellen, have been like my
evening and morning star—the last ray of serene comfort at night, and the
brightest dawn of hope in the morning. From day to day, and from year to
year, have you clung to the memory of the youth to whom you plighted your
young affections—through good and through evil report—through life and in
death, (as was supposed) you have without wavering or turning aside, cherished
the first bright morning dream of youthful love. Do you know, my
Ellen, that the world scarcely believes in the reality of such early attachments
enduring to the end. The heartless throng know not, my sweet playmate, of
the little romantic world we possess within ourselves. They have all gone
astray after strange gods, and cannot believe that others will be more true and
devoted than they have been. Especially has the odium of all such failures
been laid to the charge of your sex, but I am sure unjustly. The first slight
or unkindness nearly always proceeds from the other, and this slight or unkindness
cannot be blazoned to the world—it is hidden within the recesses of
the sufferer's heart, and pride (perhaps proper maidenly pride) prevents it from
ever being known. How happy are we my Ellen, that not a shadow of distrust
has fallen out between us—if indeed I except your momentary confounding
me with the gentleman whose name I had assumed, and my temporary

mistake about my brother's marriage with you. You see I have brought
myself to write that name. While I am upon the subject of Miss Elliot's
engagement, permit me to explain one thing which I omitted in the hurry of
departure, and the confusion which attended all its exciting scenes. That
young lady though present at the masking scene at the Governor's house, and
knowing of my design to present myself in disguise, among my old associates,
was not made acquainted with the name or occupation which I would assume.
The resolution to adopt that name was seized upon after the departure of that
young lady and her father. Hence her supposition, on hearing that Mr. Hall
had arrived in the Colony, that it was her own Henry. I am led to think of
these things, by seeing, so frequently, this young gentleman, with whom I
was, and am, on the most intimate terms. His distress of mind is truly pitiable—he
appears like one physically alive and well, and yet dead to all hope.
Not absolutely dead to all hope either, for you should have seen how the blessed,
but dormant, faculty flashed up for a moment or two, when I told him, a
little while ago, that there was a prospect of an expedition being sent ahead of
the troops, in pursuit of the assassins and robbers who murdered our old friend
and stole his mistress. Oh, if he could be sent off upon such an expedition,
what a blessed relief the activity and excitement of the pursuit would be to
him. But the Governor, though sympathizing fully with him and me, would
not consent to it, and I must say his reasons were to me, satisfactory; not so,
however, with my poor friend; he is dissatisfied with the Governor on account
of it, and if it were not for my restraining and urgent counsel, he would start
off, single handed, in pursuit. The fact is, his apprehensions for the fate of
the poor girl, whether dead or alive, are so desponding, that the madness and
rashness of such an adventure, only add new charms to it, in his eyes, and I
can only seduce him from such wild designs by dwelling upon the known
clemency of the Indians to other females, who have for months and years
remained captives with them. I have exhausted all my recollections of the
kind, and I have put the scout, Jarvis, in possession of his dreadful secret, and
commanded him to detail all his knowledge favorable to my views. At this
very moment he is walking with Joe, among the tall pines, his melancholy
eye wandering among the stars, while Joe is telling a long story of a Mrs.
Thompson, who was taken prisoner by them and carried beyond the mountains.
I at first suspected my new forest friend, of romancing in the wildest
vein, and inventing as he went along, for the justifiable purpose, as it seemed
to me, of plucking the rooted sorrow from the heart of my friend, but I am
satisfied now that it is a true narrative, because he recounted several circumstances
about the route to the mountains, which he had before told me he had
procured from an old lady, who had been a prisoner among the Indians. Seeing
that he was, for the time, so absorbed with the story of the scout, I have
stolen away, my Ellen, to hold this sweet converse with you. If you had but
known the charming girl, about whom my friend thus mourns, you would
neither be surprised nor jealous that even I feel an anxious interest in her fate.
Think too of her sad history,—the loss of her uncle by whom she was adopted,
and upon whom she doted as a father, little less fond than the real one whom
she has now lost, also. Think, too, of the dreadful manner of their two deaths
—of her nearest and dearest kinsmen. Then bring before your mind the
highly educated, delicate and sensitive girl herself—torn from the reeking
body of her deceased parent; and borne a captive among a rude and wild people,
not one word of whose language she understands. Oh its a dreadful fate
for one like her. She is a most lovely girl in every sense of the word, and as
good as she is beautiful! I feel a double interest in her fate, because her
sad lot is so much like my own. We were first wrecked by the same disastrous
political storm—thrown upon the same shores, and among the same
people for a time.

The Governor, you know, is her distant kinsman, and of course he feels as

lively an interest in the pursuit of her captors as it is possible under the circumstances,
but he is a stern old soldier, and will not risk the success of his
expedition for any mere private feelings, however near home they may come.

Poor Hall! we are of the same mess, and of course our tent is to be a melancholy
place, for he walks about like a troubled spirit. Many a time at
midnight, I will turn to you for companionship, for though distant in body we
are ever present I trust in spirit.

Before I close this scrawl, scratched upon a camp stool, as I sit upon the
ground, I cannot help recurring to the last letter which I wrote to you. It
was penned under circumstances scarcely more favorable to my caligraphy
than this, for I was then propped up in my bed and wrote upon my portfolio.
Little did I imagine then, my Ellen, that that letter would ever be productive of
some of the most delightful moments of my life. It is almost impossible for
you to conceive of the delight with which I surreptitiously stole away the
treasured memories stored up in your heart. You thought then, my Ellen, did
you not, that they were garnered up, never to be again gazed upon by mortal
man upon this earth?—but by the talisman of that real letter I produced a key
—one, it is true, crusted over with the deepest sorrows known to the human
heart. Nor did you even then have a sly suspicion that your long lost lover
had risen from the dead to be the hearer of his own last dying words. No,
no, my own Ellen, your affliction was too real to have suffered any suspicion
of the bearer to intrude—it was not until I began to unfold those habits of
thought which touched upon old times, those dearest treasures of the heart,
those associations linked in inseparably with the very fibres of our being, that
you began to suspect me. Do you remember the walk we had by the little
romantic brook where we were talking of the falling of the leaves—and I
ventured upon the dangerous experiment of reproducing some of our old talk.
Methinks I see your stare of astonishment now, and your startling turn of
the head every now and then, as link by link I touched those dear old associations;
every word gushing and teeming with meanings only known to ourselves?
I expected every moment to hear your startled scream, but if you
penetrated my disguise, your prudence triumphed, and you suffered me to wear
my masquerading dress until such time as my own circumstances should point
out the time of unmasking. I know that you must have been frightfully mystified
just at that time, and until all doubt vanished. I sympathized fully in
your distress, but I would not make you an accessory, even after the fact, to
my treason. Had I failed in my application to my sovereign, I might have
proposed to you to desert your venerable and excellent father, and your own
dear and delightful home, for other and strange lands, but I had not fully come
to the resolve, and would not have done so, until that application failed. Even
then I could scarcely have had the heart to tear you away from all the endearments
which now cluster around you. Do you know my own Ellen, that I
love your home—your flowers—your books—your music—your pictures—
your chairs—every thing that is yours. This little Testament of our Lord
and Master, with your name written in it, which lies before me, looks like no
other book. The very letters seem to be illuminated—the book actually has
an appearance about it belonging to no other, and that with which it is invested,
is far more vividly impressed upon those household objects which
daily surround you. Could I have torn you away from all these? My memory
wanders, even now among your books, and music, and flowers, and birds
and everything that goes to make up that dear home, which you have so inseparably
stamped with your own identity. How vividly the charming domestic
picture rises up before my fancy! Indeed, it is scarcely ever absent
from my thoughts, sleeping or waking.

Even over these wild scenes into which we are penetrating each hour,
deeper and farther, these blessed visions throw a softened and mellowed light.
What a blessed thing is memory, to all the virtuous creatures of the earth!—

that magic store-house of the heart's treasures. It is surely the divinest of
faculties, it penetrates the farthest back, and will last longest of them all, for
it will constitute the connecting link between this and a higher and purer state
of existence. It is the most distinguishing characteristic of our race, and
above every thing else marks us ont as immortals. Oh, what true wisdom
and beneficence in that provision which confines its wondrous powers to man.
Did you ever reflect what an awful thing, this truly blessed thing to us, would
have been to the lower orders of creation? It would have made the earth to
them a Hell, teeming and multiplying with horrors. That it has been given
to us alone, is at once a testimony and a guarantee of our immortality. Do
you know that I doubt the capacity of any one for enduring attachments,
who doubts the immortality of the soul? The mere hope and belief elevates
us above common sensuality, and refines and purifies our nature. All good
men desire and believe it. You may smile at my thus founding, what is ordinarily
called an effort of the understanding in the heart; but those who have
observed human nature most, will be most ready to believe it.

The pure sentiment of love, though blended with passion, is very near kin
to the divine, especially that sublimated phase of it, which, you exhibited for
your dead lover. Your trials of the heart, my Ellen, have been truly great,
and I feel humbled in the comparison with you. Though I cannot approach
your excellence and exaltation of character, I hope to blend my future existence
so inseparably with yours, that I may catch a portion of its exaltation.

I have often heard you say, that if required, you could lay down your life
with me, and that you would far rather do it than survive me, either married
or unmarried. This is a test of which I solemnly believe many of your sex
capable, but alas for ours, there is not one in ten thousand capable of it.—
You were suprised at my shrinking from the question, my love, because you
had not understood, and could not, thoroughly understand the characteristic
difference of the sex. You were loth to believe that your
lover was so earthly as to desire the earth for its own sake, and when
all that bright halo which sentiment throws around its dreary paths, was blotted
out; but you reasoned from within and not from without, from your own
experience and not from the world's. Oh when the world is all thus purified
and sublimated, then will the lion lie down with the lamb. Your heart has
been purified by a high faith and a bright hope. God's holy spirit has poured
its benign influence on your heart—already, more than commonly elevated
above its kind—and most truly did you say that your affection for me was
blended with all your holiest and highest aspirations; no wonder then that you
could die a martyr in a double sense. I will strive, my own Ellen, to make
myself worthy of an attachment so pure, so far above the dross of this earth.
It might be a wise question for moralists, how such an attachment could hold
to one so confessedly impure as your correspondent; one so weighed down
with the grosser passions of selfishness in its thousand phases, and ambition
with its earthly means. But I do not desire to perplex your sensitive mind
with the question. I am sufficiently happy that my youthful fancy was fated
to select one so every way worthy of my maturest approbation.

I will write to you daily. You see I have already renewed our old subjects
of conversation. I cannot now exist without communing in the spirit with
you. I cannot ask you to answer my letters, but should a courier be despatched
after the army, for any purpose, I am sure I shall hear from you.