Yours of January 22d did not come to hand till the 26th of February at Baltimore, after our resolve to return to this city. Here I arrived last Wednesday, and omitted writing to you by one opportunity, expecting another of greater dispatch, wherein I have been disappointed. Laugh not at this circumstantial detail. It is produced altogether as an opiate for my own sensibility. For I well recollect how much pleasure the receipt of your kind letter gave me; and I remember it to have been the first enjoyment of the kind which any one had afforded me after I left Boston. And therefore it was that I felt a guilty flutter, upon taking up my pen just now, to do what ought not to have been omitted thus long, without Reason; which I was trying to give to myself in the first lines above.
The Business, which deprived me & mine of your good Company in Boston, has robbed me also in Baltimore, at times, of my customary pillow visitor. But I have such a hope of things being now in a proper train, that sweet Sleep will resume the place which sour Care has occupied for a season. Cannon & amunition are in forwardness for Ticonderoga: and some new levies are actually arrived there. So that, if it is not already invested, we may be well prepared for a spring-attack. The lake was not frozen at our last information; nor did the small pox prevail in the garrison, tho' there was some appearance of that distemper.
The Enemy in the Jersies have been long liable to be destroyed by any considerable Army of vigor. I am not able from any regular returns to say what number we have had; and you are as good a judge as I can be as to spirit.
High expectations have been formed here of good news from Rh. Island, where there can be only a small inimical force. But a letter which I have just recd. from Providence puts an end to those expectations.
It is plain that we must look for another summer's bloody work. And, tho' I cannot say it is absolutely certain that there will be forreign diversions in our favor, yet I think the appearances of such an event are many & encouraging. As to supplies of arms & cloathing-there is no doubt but we shall be well off in a few months, even to a surplus. But, we must set out with what can now be collected by industry in each state of the Union, by purchase or loan or impressment.
It is judged altogether impossible for Howe to move this way by land for want of forrage & horses: The quantity and number of which ought to be accurately ascertained, in secret modes of intelligence by our General.
Confusion to the wretches who broke in upon your intended rural scheme of life! Historians, Poets & Painters unite to direct us from noisy Capitals to country Retirements for the greatest felicity within the allotments of this habitable Planet. I had often formed wishful prospects of spending some future part of my Days as a farmer, before old age should unfit me to set an industrious example in that course of life to my dear Boys. But I was obliged like you to make a proviso for my beloved partner, "if it should be her choice." For, without an union of sentiment in such connexions, no alteration of an habitual course of living could be crowned with felicity. May the Scenes of war, rapine & murder, from which, in generous patriotic resolution, you have scorned to hide yourself, be soon at an end! And may they eventually, in contrast with the future fulfilments of your former rural plan, be productive of a vast encrease of happiness.
In Baltimore I had the satisfaction of dieting in the same family with Coll. Whipple. Here, we have taken lodgings together. This circumstance tends much to alleviate the great vexation which is the product of my mission to this part of the Continent. Our landlord is Mr. Geo. Duncan of Boston. But it is the landlady which determined me in this land of strangers. Tell my Friends and Polly Middleton's Friend that Mrs. Duncan formerly was a Ran, the pretty daughter of Parry. The marked words, simple as they appear, caused many a fat laugh for your charming wife some years ago. Though past years and the laughing irritability peculiar to them will not return, yet let us hope together for a lengthy series of more rational pleasures, calm & philosophical in our after course, thro, what the splenetic call, "this Vale of Tears."
The Remnant of this Sheet will suffice to contain in words the Profession of an affectionate regard for you and your dear Hannah, which no extent of seperation from you can alter, and which is really heightened by my misfortune lately threatning to cut me off from all opportunity of asserting myself Your Friend & h. servt, James Lovell