"I certainly hope to escape from this place and return to your beloved arms. No man has stronger inducements to wish to live than I have. I have no quarrel with the world: it has used me as well as could be expected. I have valuable friends in every country where I have put my foot, not excepting this abominable sink of wickedness, pestilence and folly--the city of Algiers. I have a pretty extensive and dear-bought knowledge of mankind; a most valuable collection of books; a pure and undivided taste for domestic tranquillity, the social intercourse of friends, study, and the exercise of charity. I have a moderate but sufficient income, perfect health, an unimpaired constitution, and, to give the relish to all enjoyments and smooth away the asperities that might arise from unforeseen calamities, I have the wife that my youth chose and my advancing age has cherished--the pattern of excellence, the example of every virtue--from whom all my joys have risen, in whom all my hopes are centred. "I will use every precaution for my safety, as well for your sake as mine. But if you should see me no more, my dearest friend, you will not forget I loved you. As you have valued my love, and as you believe this letter is written with an intention to promote your happiness at a time when it will be for ever out of my power to contribute to it in any other way, I beg you will kindly receive the last advice I can give you, with which I am going to close our endearing intercourse.... Submitting with patience to a destiny that is unavoidable, let your tenderness for me soon cease to agitate that lovely bosom: banish it to the house of darkness and dust, with the object that can no longer be benefited by it, and transfer your affections to some worthy person who shall supply my place in the relation I have borne to you. It is for the living, not the dead, to be rendered happy by the sweetness of your temper, the purity of your heart, your exalted sentiments, your cultivated spirit, your undivided love. Happy man of your choice should he know and prize the treasure of such a wife! Oh, treat her tenderly, my dear sir: she is used to nothing but kindness, unbounded love and confidence. She is all that any reasonable man can desire. She is more than I have merited, or perhaps than you can merit. My resigning her to your charge, though but the result of uncontrollable necessity, is done with a degree of cheerfulness--a cheerfulness inspired by the hope that her happiness will be the object of your care and the long-continued fruit of your affection.