280. Abigail Adams.
13 November, 1782.
My dearest Friend,—I have lived to see the close of the third year of our separation. This is a melancholy anniversary to me, and many tender scenes arise in my mind upon the recollection. I feel unable to sustain even the idea that it will be half that period ere we meet again. Life is too short to have the dearest of its enjoyments curtailed; the social feelings grow callous by disuse, and lose that pliancy of affection which sweetens the cup of life as we drink it. The rational pleasures of friendship and society, and the still more refined sensations of which delicate minds only are susceptible, like the tender blossoms, when the rude northern blasts assail them, shrink within and collect themselves together, deprived of the all-cheering and beamy influence of the sun. The blossom falls and the fruit withers and decays; but here the similitude fails, for, though lost for the present, the season returns, the tree vegetates anew, and the blossom again puts forth.
But, alas! with me, those days which are past are gone forever, and time is hastening on that period when I must fall to rise no more until mortality shall put on immortality, and we shall meet again, pure and disembodied spirits. Could we live to the age of the antediluvians, we might better support this separation; but, when threescore years and ten circumscribe the life of man, how painful is the idea that, of that short space, only a few years of social happiness are our allotted portion.
Perhaps I make you unhappy. No. You will enter with a soothing tenderness into my feelings. I see in your eyes the emotions of your heart, and hear the sigh that is wafted across the Atlantic to the bosom of Portia. But the philosopher and the statesman stifles these emotions, and regains a firmness which arrests my pen in my hand.
25 November.
I last evening received a line from Boston to hasten my letter down or I should again lose an opportunity of conveyance. I was most unfortunate by the Firebrand's sailing and leaving all my letters behind. A storm prevented my sending on the day appointed, and she sailed by sunrise the next morning. Though my letters were in town by nine o'clock, they missed. I know, if she arrive, how disappointed you will feel.
I received from France by the Alexander yours, bearing no date, but, by the contents, written about the same time with those I received by Mr. Guild. Shall I return the compliment, and tell you in a poetical style,—