Your husband has been measuring coal all day

Boston, Feby. 11th, 1840 7 P.M.

Belovedest,

Your letter, with its assurance of your present convalescence, and its promise (to which I shall hold you fast) that you will never he sick any more, caused me much joy. . . . Dearest, George Hillard came in just as I had written the first sentence; so we will begin on a new score.

Your husband has been measuring coal all day, aboard of a black little British schooner, in a dismal dock at the north end of the city. Most of the time, he paced the deck to keep himself warm; for the wind (north-east, I believe it was) blew up through the dock, as if it had been the pipe of a pair of bellows. The vessel lying deep between two wharves, there was no more delightful prospect, on the right hand and on the left, than the posts and timbers, half immersed in the water, and covered with ice, which the rising and falling of Successive tides had left upon them; so that they looked like immense icicles. Across the water, however, not more than half a mile off, appeared the Bunker Hill monument; and what interested me considerably more, a church-steeple, with the dial of a clock upon it,- whereby I was enabled to measure the march of the weary hours. Sometimes your husband descended into the dirty little cabin of the schooner, and warmed himself by a red-hot stove, among biscuit-barrels, pots and kettles, seachests, and innumerable lumber of all sorts his olfactories, meanwhile, being greatly refreshed by the odour of a pipe, which the captain or some of his crew were smoking. But at last came the sunset, with delicate clouds and purple light upon the islands; and your husband blessed it, because it was the signal of his release; and so he came home to talk with his dearest wife. And now he bids her farewell, because he is tired and sleepy. God bless you, belovedest. Dream happy dreams of me tonight.