FROM JONATHAN BELLAMY
Norwich, March 14th, 1775.
To do justice to circumstances, which you know are of the greatest importance in order to form a true estimate of what a person either says or does, it is indispensably necessary for me to tell you that it not only rains very generously, but that it is as dark as it was before light was created. It would be ridiculous to suppose that you need information that nothing but the irresistible desire of writing could possibly keep me at home this evening.
I had received your February favour only just time to laugh at it once, when the melancholy news that Betsy Devotion, of Windham, was very dangerously sick, banished every joyous thought from my heart. This Betsy you may remember to have heard mentioned near the name of Natty Huntington, who died last December; and a very angel she was too, I assure you. You see I speak of her in the past sense, for she has left us; and her friends are sure she is not less an angel now than she was ten days ago. Very certain I am, that if a natural sweetness of disposition can scale Heaven's walls, she went over like a bird. But I believe we must leave her and all the rest of our departed friends to be sentenced by a higher Board.
"Transports last not in the human heart;
But all with transports soon agree to part."
If nature, in spite of us, did not take care of herself, we could not but be perfectly wretched. Philosophy is the emptiest word in the dictionary. And you may observe, wherever you find them, that those persons who profess to place all their reliance upon it, under every affecting circumstance of life, do but make use of the term as a mask for an iron heart. "But" (as the devil said on another occasion) "put forth thine hand, and touch his bone, and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." They have as little fortitude as anybody when sufferings pinch home upon them.
Thus have I relieved a heart that perhaps felt a little too full; and if it is at the expense of my head, I have nevertheless the consolation that it will be received only as the overflowings of my present feelings.
"When and where shall I see you again?" somebody once asked me. The Lord only knows. Perhaps at the election at Hartford. If we can meet there—there will be time for notice. But, happen as it may, be assured that I am your most sincere friend,
JONATHAN BELLAMY.
"Stick my compliments in for him," says Hannah Phelps, a jolly girl of fourteen.