#letter extract

You write me the most charming letters, my dear heart; in them you do justice to the feelings which I entertain for you and give me living evidence of something done for the purpose of giving me pleasure two ways of making me happy, and it is a delight for me to receive my happiness from you. How can you ask whether your being with child pleases me? You yourself have given the answer to that question by adding, at the bottom of your letter, an account of your own feelings. Our happiness is something shared, my dear heart, and this sharing should be true not only of our feelings but of our thoughts.

- Extract of a letter from Alexander Graham Bell to Mabel Bell, 20th January 1877

Do not you think that after my return we might be sufficiently grown up to have a house of our own where we might live happily together, receive our friends, establish a pleasing liberty, and read the newspapers of foreign countries without having the curiosity to go there and see for ourselves how they live? I like to build dream-castles in France where all shall be happiness and pleasure. You figure always, dear heart, as one half of myself. Once we are reunited, no one shall ever part us again or keep us from tasting, each through the other, the sweetness of a mutual love and the most delicious, the happiest tranquillity.

My heart is deeply troubled, but I do not wish to add to your affliction by painting a picture of my own. Farewell, farewell, dear heart. Give a thousand thousand kisses to our darling Anastasie, and kiss our other child for me. Oh, happy they to have you there to see! Must it always be, dear heart, that I to whom you give such happiness must always make you sad by absence? Forgive me: the pain I feel is punishment enough [...] At this moment I feel I love you more than I could have believed possible.

It always grieves me to take leave of you, even in a letter, and it is my evil star that keeps me in continual movement, so that I have no one but myself to blame that I see you only for the sixth part of the time I could wish. But you know my heart, or at least its sincerity, and will, I hope, always believe me when I say that it is yours for life and loves you with a true tenderness.

Your ‘nonsense’ about Voltaire contains more good sense than all the strictures I have seen upon his works put together. Next to your own ideas, those you gave me from Mr. J. were most acceptable. I wish you would continue to give me any fugitive ideas or remarks which may occur to you in the course of your reading; and what you call your rattling way, is that of all things which pleases me the most. In short, let the way be your own, and it cannot fail to be acceptable, to please, and to amuse.

Write to me punctually, for by so doing you will give me pleasure. Goodbye, dear heart. In whatever country I may find myself, I shall always love you tenderly.

It seems a thousand years, dear heart, since I had any news from you or heard anything about my children. Give them a thousand thousand kisses from me, and tell Anastasie not to forget me, because I love her with all my heart. As to our poor little George, I can scarcely expect him to know anything about me. [...] Farewell, farewell, dear heart. When shall I be permitted never to use that word except with the certainty of seeing you the moment after? When shall I be able to give you a thousand thousand kisses, and to assure you of a love which no words of mine can sufficiently express, and which few hearts are capable of feeling so intensely?