TO MISS PEABODY
Custom-House, April 6th, 1840. 5 P.M.
How long it is, belovedest, since I have written thee a letter from this darksome region. Never did I write thee a word from hence that was worth reading, nor shall I now; but perhaps thou wouldst get no word at all, these two or three days, unless I write it here. This evening, dearest, I am to have a visitor—the illustrious Colonel Hall himself; and I have even promised him a bed on my parlor floor—so that, as thou seest, the duties of hospitality will keep me from communion with the best little wife in the world.
Hearts never do understand the mystery of separation—that is the business of the head. My sweetest, dearest, purest, holiest, noblest, faithfullest wife, dost thou know what a loving husband thou hast? Dost thou love him most immensely?—beyond conception, and dost thou feel, as he 168 does, that every new throb of love is worth all other happiness in the world?
Dearest, my soul drank thy letter this forenoon, and has been conscious of it ever since, in the midst of business and noise and all sorts of wearisome babble. How dreamlike it makes all my external life, this continual thought and deepest, inmostest musing upon thee! I live only within myself; for thou art always there. Thou makest me a disembodied spirit; and with the eve of a spirit, I look on all worldly things—and this it [is] that separates thy husband from those who seem to be his fellows—therefore is he "among them, but not of them." Thou art transfused into his heart, and spread all round about it; and it is only once in a while that he himself is even imperfectly conscious of what a miracle has been wrought upon him.
Well, dearest, were ever such words as these written in a Custom-House before? Oh, and what a mighty heave my heart has given, this very moment! Thou art most assuredly thinking of me now, wife of my inmost bosom. Never did I know what love was before—I did not even know it when I began this letter. Ah, but I ought not to say that; it would make me sad to believe that 169 I had not always loved thee. Farewell, now, dearest. Be quiet, my Dove; lest my heart be made to flutter by the fluttering of thy wings.
April 7th. 6 P.M. My tenderest Dove, hast thou lived through the polar winter of to-day; for it does appear to me to have been the most uncomfortable day that ever was inflicted on poor mortals. Thy husband has had to face it in all its terrors; and the cold has penetrated through his cloak, through his beaver-cloth coat and vest, and was neutralised nowhere but in the region round about his heart—and that it did not chill him even there, he owes to thee. I know not whether I should not have jumped overboard in despair today, if I had not sustained my spirit by the thought of thee, most beloved wife; for, besides the bleak, unkindly air, I have been plagued by two sets of coal-shovellers at the same time, and have had to keep two separate tallies simultaneously. But, dearest, I was conscious that all this was merely a vision and a phantasy, and that, in reality, I was not half-frozen by the bitter blast, nor plagued to death by those grimy coal-heavers, but that I was basking quietly in the sunshine of eternity, with mine own Dove. Any sort of bodily and earthly torment may serve to make us 170 sensible that we have a soul that is not within the jurisdiction of such shadowy demons—it separates the immortal within us from the mortal. But the wind has blown my brain into such confusion that I cannot philosophise now.
Blessingest wife, what a habit I have contracted of late, of telling thee all my grievances and annoyances, as if such trifles were worth telling—or as if, supposing them to be so, they would be the most agreeable gossip in the world to thee. Thou makest me behave like a child, naughtiest. Why dost thou not frown at my nonsensical complaints, and utterly refuse thy sympathy? But I speak to thee of the miseries of a cold day, and blustering wind, and intractable coal-shovellers, with just the same certainty that thou wilt listen lovingly and sympathisingly, as if I were speaking of the momentous and permanent concerns of life.
Dearest, ... (portion of letter missing)
I do not think that I can come on Friday—there is hardly any likelihood of it; for one of the Measurers is indisposed, which throws additional work on the efficient members of our honorable body. But there is no expressing how I do yearn for thee! The strength of the feeling seems to make my words cold and tame. Dearest, this is but a poor epistle, yet is written in very great 171 love and worship of thee—so, for the writer's sake, thou wilt receive it into thy heart of hearts. God keep thee—and me also for thy sake.
Thine Ownest.
Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
Salem, Mass.