 | Letters of Mrs. Adams, |  |
I have lived to see the close of the third year of our
separation. This is a melancholy anniversary to
me, and many tender scenes arise in my mind upon
the recollection. I feel unable to sustain even the
idea, that it will be half that period ere we meet
again. Life is too short to have the dearest of its
enjoyments curtailed; the social feelings grow callous
by disuse, and lose that pliancy of affection
which sweetens the cup of life as we drink it. The
rational pleasures of friendship and society, and
the still more refined sensations of which delicate
minds only are susceptible, like the tender blossom,
when the rude northern blasts assail them, shrink
within and collect themselves together, deprived of
the all-cheering and beamy influence of the sun.
The blossom falls and the fruit withers and decays;
but here the similitude fails, for, though lost for the
and the blossom again puts forth.
But, alas! with me, those days which are past
are gone for ever, and time is hastening on that
period when I must fall to rise no more, until mortality
shall put on immortality, and we shall meet
again, pure and disembodied spirits. Could we live
to the age of the antediluvians, we might better support
this separation; but, when threescore years and
ten circumscribe the life of man, how painful is the
idea, that, of that short space, only a few years of
social happiness are our allotted portion.
Perhaps I make you unhappy. No. You will
enter with a soothing tenderness into my feelings.
I see in your eyes the emotions of your heart, and
hear the sigh that is wafted across the Atlantic to
the bosom of Portia. But the philosopher and the
statesman stifles these emotions, and regains a firmness
which arrests my pen in my hand.
| Letters of Mrs. Adams, | |