“I am fading away on board a Missouri river boat and one of the poorest specimens at that. . . . It is so hot in this cabin that it is very hard to make any exertion, but I can’t let this Sunday go by without writing you.”
“We were very happy together, Annie, and I have not, even yet, been able to realize that it is really past and gone — that those days can never come again to us; they were too bright to last. We both I think lived in the joyousness of the present not heeding the future with its dark pictures of separation and loneliness. . . . I begin to feel now what a sacrifice it was for me to come out here — things don’t seem the same to me that they did before.”
“I used to find enjoyment in my surroundings and association that I look for in vain now. Something is missing. Some need of my life wanting; it is simply that I am away from you.”
“When I left you at the depot in Biddeford I never felt so thoroughly alone and so entirely miserable: it all came on me at once — the mournful contrast between the perfect happiness of the past 24 hours and the dreariness of the many long hours to come — hours, days, weeks, months and perhaps years.”
“The men are constantly shooting at ducks and geese from the upper deck and the noise is painful. Were you present on this boat, you would see many novel and amusing things. There are quartered on the lower deck a hundred mules who amuse themselves by playfully kicking their neighbor and singing in a pleasant tone of voice. There is almost everything on board — mules, horses, wagons, tents, big boxes, little boxes, bundles of bedding, men scattered through all, men in red shirts, men in blue shirts, men in striped, checkered shirts (nary a white shirt), one woman of African descent (laundress), 450 dogs more or less, one greasy cook who never ‘cleaned his body.’”
“I am just beginning to look rough with my woolen shirt, old clothes and a week’s growth of beard. Am afraid you would not be so fond of me now.”
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