"MY DEAREST LIFE AND ONLY LOVE: I run no risk of alarming your extreme sensibility by writing this letter, since it is not my intention that it shall come into your hands unless and until, through some other channel, you shall be informed of the event which it anticipates as possible. For our happy union to be dissolved by death is indeed at every moment possible; but at this time there is an uncommon degree of danger that you may lose a life which I know you value more than you do your own. I say I _know_ this, because I have long been taught, from our perfect sympathy of affection, to judge your heart by mine; and I can say solemnly and truly, as far as I know myself, that I have no other value for my own life than as a means of continuing a conjugal union with the best of women--the wife of my soul, my first, my last, my only love. I have told you in my current letters that the plague is raging with considerable violence in this place. I must tell you in this, if it should be your fortune to see it, that a pressing duty of humanity requires me to expose myself more than other considerations would justify in endeavoring to save as many of our unhappy citizens as possible from falling a sacrifice, and to embark them at this cruel moment for their country. Though they are dying very fast, it is possible that my exertions may be the means of saving a number who otherwise would perish. If this should be the case, and _I_ should fall instead of _them_, my tender, generous friend must not upbraid my memory by ever thinking I did too much. But she cannot help it: I know she cannot. Yet, my dearest love, give me leave, since I must anticipate your affliction, to lay before you some reflections which would recur to you at _last_, but which ought to strike your mind at _first_, to mingle with and assuage your first emotions of grief. You cannot judge at your distance of the risk I am taking, nor of the necessity of taking it; and I am convinced that were you in my place you would do more than I shall do, for your kind, intrepid spirit has more courage than mine, and always had. "Another consideration: Many of these persons have wives at home as well as I, from whom they have been much longer separated, under more affecting circumstances, having been held in a merciless and desponding slavery: if their wives love them as mine does me (a thing I cannot believe, but have no right to deny), ask these lately disconsolate and now joyous families whether I have done too much.