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TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
misfortunes. perhaps you too are unhappy and now that the angelic sheilds [sic] that guarded your virtue through so many trial and afflic- tions are removed I own that I must forget my own troubles and pi,ty you but I must hold up as the ladies have something to say Respectfully Your friend Genl. MB Lamar Hamilton R. Boone Here is a touch of the selbine [sic] and pathetic which together with Hamiltons tobacco smoke- is bringing the tears once more into my poor eyes, It seems a week since we left you, dear General, and yet here we are only forty miles apart! Heaven knows the last thing I thought of last night was a profound hope that the porter would let us oversleep ourselves and so give [sic] this day quietly with you but instead of finding ourselves on the sofa in our room, with you cosily seated betwen us, here we are like three birds in a nest chirping for want of our other mate and laughing very loud every time you are mention [sic] with the solemn resolution of deceving each other into a belief that we have no disposition to cJ\y and in fact are very negra~ mus[?] and unfeeling freinds caring nothing atall for this last day which might have been spent in your company and we just as far on our journey. Dont mind Mr S but come to New York he is self sac- rifising and wants you to be great and attend to all the affairs of state but you are great enough for your £rinds if only with them. You do not know how much we all think of you. God bless you Ann S Stephens Notre General, We feel so dull and spiritless in our shelter for a day, that partly from a most unchristian wish to furnish you out with a similar load of dulness, and partly from a wish to send back one word more of kind remembrance we resolved to inflict a triple letter upon you- Be grateful that we did not take it into our wise heads to fill three sheets instead of three pages- I am sure there is enough in our hearts to freight quires but even in.our despondency we retain a glimmering of charity and will limit the punishment by our ideas of your power to endure. You might hint- if you were not too incorrigibly idle to reply- that even three pages implied a high estimation of your ·forti- tude, but if you were to say so rash a thing, we would inform you under our several hands and seals that we intend, individually and collec- tively, to pay a large debt of mingled recollections, in semi monthly instalments of three pages each. I think it but right to forewarn you of the evil and offer you some consolatory hopes of mitigation at the same time, in ease you declare and adduce plausible evidence of your inability to live through it. There - we undertook to excel each other in writing nonsense and I flatter myself that I bear off the palm. In that particular branch of literature I am confident Mrs. Stephens can't equal me My genius lies that way, and what Boon has written will look like a quaker sermon, and what Mrs. S. will write (for part of the second page is left for the display of her talents in the nonsense line) will f be ] an essay on the ethics of the Pre-Adamites compared to my page- Seriously General we are striving to forget that a long time- perhaps one that knows no r<'ckonin~-- will probably elapse before we
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