. . .This morning came your truly welcome letter of Monday evening,” he wrote her at one time. “Where did it loiter so long?

“Nothing in my absence is so flattering to me as your health and cheerfulness. I then [Pg 64]contemplate nothing so eagerly as my return, amuse myself with ideas of my own happiness, and dwell upon the sweet domestic joys which I fancy prepared for me.

“Nothing is so unfriendly to every species of enjoyment as melancholy. Gloom, however dressed, however caused, is incompatible with friendship. They cannot have place in the mind at the same time. It is the secret, the malignant foe of sentiment and love.”

He always wrote fondly of the children:

“My love to the smiling little girl,” he said in one letter. “I continually plan my return with childish impatience, and fancy a thousand incidents which are most interesting.”

After five years of married life the . . . Read More