LETTER XIV.
TO E. HARTLEY.
New-York, April 28.
Why don't you come home, my love?
Are you not quite well? Tell me when; the
day, the hour, when I may expect you. I will
put new elegance into my garb; new health
into my cheeks; new light; new love; new
joy into my eyes, against that happy hour.
Would to heaven I were with you. I represented
to my father what an excellent nurse
I should prove, but he would not suffer me to
accompany him. I have a good mind to steal
away to you, even now; but are you not already
quite well? Yes, you are; or, very soon
will be. Time and care are all that are required
to make you so.
But, poor Mary....Does not your heart, my
Edward, bleed for poor Mary? Can I rob her
of so precious a good; bereave her of the gem
of which she has so long been in secure possession?
Can I riot in bliss, and deck myself in bridal
ornaments, while she lives pining in dreary
solitude, carrying to the grave an heart
broken by the contumelies of the world; the
horrors of indigence and neglect; and chiefly
by the desertion of him on whom she doated?
Do I not know what it is to love? Cannot I
easily imagine what it is to bear about an unrequited
passion? Have I not known, from
infancy, the pleasures of affluence and homage?
Cannot I conceive the mortifications to one
thus bred up, of poverty and labour? Indeed,
my friend, I conceive them so justly, that till
Mary Wilmot is discovered, and is either
been found happy, or been made happy, no
selfish gratification, whatever, can insure my
peace.
I should not thus be deeply interested for
a mere stranger. I know your Mary. Your
details, full of honesty and candour, have made
me thoroughly acquainted with her. You have
given me, in the picture of her life, the amplest
picture of an human being that I ever was allowed
to survey. Her virtue, my friend, has
been tried. Not without foibles, she is, for
which she was indebted to her education; but
her signal excellence lies in having, in spite of
a most pernicious education, so few faults.
My friend, you must find her. As you
value my happiness, you must. Nay, as you
value my love. If your zeal did not lead you
to move heaven and earth in her cause, you
would be, in my eyes, a wretch. Nay, if you
did not....But I am straying from the path. I
must not think of her, lest my admiration and
my pity for her get the better of my love for
you.
Pray, make haste and be well, that you
make as happy as she can be, your fond, your
devoted
