[Letter from Elizabeth Upshur Teackle to her husband, Littleton Dennis Teackle, August 2, 1811]

My dear husband

When the last mail went out I wrote you a short letter, and today the truth I was so exceeding unwell, I had not power to enlarge my epistle. Revived and renevated with the spirits of a fine morning, and I thank God that I can add, the glow of joy that a degree of returning health bestows. I have look’d around for some employment suited to my feelings, and which may continue this elasticity, through the day: as it has always been my opinion that an act of duty is the best preserver of one’s good humour and tranquility. I naturally resort to the discharge of one of those pleasing tasks, where duty claims her due in concert with the hearts free will. Sunday, you know, in the Country is the day which most people rather endure than improve. The mind tied down to a prescribed rule of action from the love it has for independence

naturally revolts from the constraint and from it’s waywardness refutes that good which might be assumed to itself, relaxes into supineness and morbid inanity. Thus it is too often with me - I am sorry for it. My failings convict me of weakness in this point, and I must, positively, endeavour to correct them. This morning, when for the first time in the space of five weeks, I took my circuit through the garden, I was full of cheerfulness, and thought only of the present enjoyment, when lo! Entering the house, looking around, and finding Sunday delimated in the mild tranquility of its colouring throughout the [aparturing] I was as near as possible to the dreadful ennui which a constraint on my choice of amusements always has hitherto produced. And I verily believe I shou’d have imagined myself sicker than ever had not a thought of you and my writing plan presented itself. In this I am already so happily engrossed that I almost never

never again to put a black mark on this holy day. Certainly if we seek to fit our employments to their proper time, no hour of our lives may be lost. There is a system in all things, but woe be unto me! I am but a theorist in systems. It remains for you to direct me to their practice. Your theories are so promptly follow’d up by action, that a superficial observer wou’d doubt whether your mind ever form’d a plan at all, or whether your system grew out of your practice. I mean this as a just tribute of praise to the active energies of your mind, but I almost tremble whilst I write it, for you hate flattery and have so often accused me of the oily flow of the tongue’s balsam to vanity. Now we have lived together too long to be over complacent and to each other and, man and wife like, truth is extorted from us by the actual existence of merit. After this fine climax, I can but revert to a certain passage of your last letter,