There was so much considerate tenderness in your epistle to-night, that, if it has not made you dearer to me, it has made me forcibly feel how very dear you are to me, by charming away half my cares.
Yours affectionately
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LETTER IX
Tuesday Morning [December 31.]
Though I have just sent a letter off, yet, as captain —— offers to take one, I am not willing to let him go without a kind greeting, because trifles of this sort, without having any effect on my mind, damp my spirits:—and you, with all your struggles to be manly, have some of this same sensibility.—Do not bid it begone, for I love to see it striving to master your features; besides, these kind of sympathies are the life of affection: and why, in cultivating our understandings, should we try to dry up these springs of pleasure, which gush out to give a freshness to days browned by care!
The books sent to me are such as we may read together; so I shall not look into them till you return; when you shall read, whilst I mend my stockings.
Yours truly
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