LETTER THIRTY-THREE
My Dear Wife,
Being hard tasked on board the Harlequin to get my time off my hands (for day and night I am utterly alone here) I have resolved to write you a love letter. It is many days, some of them, I hope, happy ones, since my last love letter, and in their wintry sweep over my head they have let fall some flakes of snow, and then they have somewhat withered, and in their course they have hurried us over a dreary wide distance of billowy sea, severing us, perhaps for ever, from our native home. But many, many darker days than the darkest we have known could not blight or chill that life of love in my heart which dictated that last letter and which dictates this. Yes, Clarinda, my own first (for I have a second now) dear Clarinda, if ever a heart was constant in its love, that heart is yours
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