Forgive all this talk; it opens in my own bosom a wound which a dozen years have not cicatrized, and brings to my recollection a dark period of my own days, the remembrance of which yet chills me with horror.
Two of your cases here may be tried. If they are, I will endeavor to assist your colleague, Mr. Elder, for you, and for your benefit. This is our court week for the civil list......
Mrs. E—— talks much of you, and if she knew I was writing, would have me add her kindest message—indicative of the interest she feels. Farewell.
In the course of Mr. Buchanan’s long subsequent political career, this incident in his early life was often alluded to in partisan newspapers, and in that species of literature called “campaign documents,” accompanied by many perversions and misrepresentations. These publications are each and all unworthy of notice. On one occasion, after he had retired to Wheatland, and when he had passed the age of seventy, he was shown by a friend a newspaper article, misrepresenting, as usual, the details of this affair. He then said, with deep emotion, that there were papers and relics which he had religiously preserved, then in a sealed package in a place of deposit in the city of New York, which would explain the trivial origin of this separation.[4] His executors found these papers inclosed and sealed separately from all others, and with a direction upon them in his handwriting, that they were to be destroyed without being read. They obeyed the injunction, and burnt the package without breaking the seal. It happened, however, that the original of the letter addressed by Mr. Buchanan to the young lady’s father, before her funeral, was not contained in this package. It was found in his private depositaries at Wheatland; and it came there in consequence of the fact that it was returned by the father unread and unopened.
It is now known that the separation of the lovers originated in a misunderstanding, on the part of the lady, of a very small matter, exaggerated by giddy and indiscreet tongues, working on a peculiarly sensitive nature. Such a separation, the commonest of occurrences, would have ended, in the ordinary course, in reconciliation, when the parties met, if death had not suddenly snatched away one of the sufferers, and left the other to a life-long grief. But under the circumstances, I feel bound to be governed by the spirit of Mr. Buchanan’s written instruction to his executors, and not to go into the details of a story which show that the whole occurrence was chargeable on the folly of others, and not on either of the two whose interests were involved.