May 3, 1755

It is with the greatest pleasure I always take my Pen in hand to write to you, for tho' it affords me none of your agreable Conversation except by Imagination yet it gives a Vent to that Extacy with wch. my heart continually o'erflows. It is nothing but the Urgency of my Necessary Business that detains me from being yr. constant & regular visitor, But while my Time is employ'd in preparing for yr. genteel & comfortable reception and my thoughts wholly employ'd to render yr. future Life happy I hope you'll never construe my absence as the Effect of Unmindfullness or Neglect. So far from that is the case that 10,000 objects around me serve to recall yr. agreable Person to my Mind. The glorious Spring brings on the Smiling Year and present to my mind the perpetual Smiles of yr. Face. The gentle Winds that blow & the Zephyrs that breathe on the new blown Flowers, paint forth the calmness of yr. Mind where a 1000 Virtues reside in perfect Serenity, but the Spring in all her Glory & the Pomp of her luxuriant Beauty is but a faint resemblance of the excellencys I admire in you. For the Spring can boast its glory but a few short days wn. its bloom & Verdure must wither & decay & its Beauty be entirely forgotten, but Freindship & Love Only know perpetual Spring. Never was a Spring so anxious to me as this. My eager mind Skips over all its beautys & presents full to my veiew the ripened Autumn when our Love wch. now blooms more flourishing than the Spring shall then be as ripe for harvest & bring forth a more abundant encrease of hapiness & felecity. Methinks I hear the chilly Winds begin to blow & frosty Nights call the Husbandman to reap his long expected Harvest. They reap a harvest of Nature's Sweets to delight the Body, but mine the harvest of long ripening Freindship & the tendrest Love. The Sultery Summer that breaks our repose with Scorching Nights & renders the company of the most agreable irksome, being gone then will be succeeded by the cool Nights wn. Nature takes her full Supply of rest & invites the most distant Lovers to each others Arms.

But whither has my eager fancy led me—excuse this Rapture & attri-259bute it to that fixt expectation I have of being more happy with you than I possibly could without you. I am willing to curb my desires till Experience & thought Shall have ripend my Resolution & my Love become the full grown fruit of Settled Freindship & Kindness. Excuse any Errors that the Sallies of my present Passion may produce, & reallize my regards to be stronger than Pen & Ink can possibly express. From yrs. &c.

Dft ; endorsed: "for a freind to his Mistress" in RTP's hand.

1.

This draft and the following draft of May 5 may be merely literary exercises, or possibly Paine wrote them for Joshua Willard (b. 1730), later a physician at Petersham, who served under his brother, Capt. Abijah Willard (1724–1782), in the expedition against Fort Beausdjour, Nova Scotia, in 1755 (Willard, Willard Genealogy, 60). On this identification, see the descriptive note for the following letter.