Has not each of us a right to use the first person singular, when speaking in behalf of our united being?

Custom House, October 1oth, 1839 - 1/2 past 2 P. M.

Belovedest, your two precious letters have arrived the first yesterday forenoon, the second today. In regard to the first, there was a little circumstance that affected me so pleasantly, that I cannot help telling my sweetest wife of it. I had read it over three times, ! believe, and was reading it again, towards evening in my room; when I discovered, in a remote region of the sheet, two or three lines which I had not before seen, and which Sophie Hawthorne had signed with her own name. It is the strangest thing in the world that I had not read them before but certainly it was a happy accident; for finding them so unexpectedly, when I supposed that I already had the whole letter by heart, it seemed as if there had been a sudden revelation of my Dove as if she had stolen into my room (as, in her last epistle, she dreams of doing) and made me sensible of her presence at that very moment. Dearest, since writing the above, I have been interrupted by some official business; for I am at present rilling the place of Colonel Hall as head of the measurers' department which may account tor my writing to you from the Custom House. It is the most ungenial place in the whole world to write a love-letter in: ---- not but what my heart is full of love, here as elsewhere: but it closes up, and will not give forth its treasure now.

I do wish mine own Dove had been with me, on my last passage to Boston. We should assuredly have thought that a miracle had been wrought in our favor that Providence had put angelic sentinels round about us, to ensure us the quiet enjoyment of our affection-- for, as far as Lynn, I was actually the sole occupant of the car in which I had seated myself. What a blissful solitude would that have been, had my whole self been there! Then would we have flown through space like two disembodied spirits -- two or one. Are we singular or plural, dearest? Has not each of us a right to use the first person singular, when speaking in behalf of our united being? Does not "I,"
whether spoken by Sophie Hawthorne's lips or mine, express the one spirit of myself and that darlingest Sophie Hawthorne? But what a wilful little person she is! Does she still refuse my Dove's proffer to kiss her cheek? Well--I shall contrive sonic suitable punishment: and if my Dove cannot kiss her, I must undertake the task in person. What a painful duty it will be!