My Dear Sir:—
I have received your favor of the 18th instant, and regret to learn from it that Mrs. Leiper and yourself have abandoned the purpose of paying us a visit. I anticipated much pleasure from this visit. I now meet very few who can converse with me from their own knowledge of the distant past; and it is always a source of high gratification to meet an old friend like yourself, even older than I am, with whom I have ever been on terms of intimacy. We are both at a period of life when it is our duty to relax our grasp on a world fast receding, and fix our thoughts, desires and affections on one which knows no change. I trust in God that, through the merits and atonement of his Son, we may be both prepared for the inevitable change.
I am truly sorry to learn that you have not been very well. My own health is now good, except some rheumatic feeling in the legs.
I experience, with you, the desire to stay at home. This comes from old age, and is a merciful dispensation of Providence, repressing the desire to mingle much with the outside world when we are no longer capable of its enjoyments. Peace and tranquillity suit us best.
Though feeling a deep interest in it, I speculate but little on the result of the approaching election. When I was behind the scenes I could generally predict the event; but not so now. I confess I was most agreeably surprised that we had carried the Congressional election on the home vote, and now indulge the hope that we may have a majority over the soldiers’ vote and all on the 8th November. In this, however, I do not feel very great confidence.
Please to present my kind regards to Mrs. Leiper, and say how sorry I am not to have been able to welcome her at Wheatland. I should still insist on your promised visit, but Miss Lane left home yesterday, to stay I do not know how long.
From your friend, very respectfully,
James Buchanan.
[MR. BUCHANAN TO MR. HASSARD.]
Wheatland, near Lancaster, November 8, 1864.