L. Tucker to Cornelia L. Littlefield (31 March 1824)

              Williamsburg, March 31st 1824
The date of your last letter / Dec 13th / my dear sister, is a severe uproach to me, & I feel it but not I am sure, as I ought to do or I should more zealously endeavour to mend those ways that obstruct a more frequent intercourse with a few valued friends.  With such only do I now attempt to keep up a correspondence.  My eyes suffer more from writing than from any other exertion of them.  And my mind becomes more imbecile in proportion as I write seldomer, I feel an increasing difficulty in doing it at all.  Peyton has been very good in writing to us and the last post brought Polly a letter, from him.  He had then lately left home, & you were all well & we rejoice that you were so & most heartily wish that your health may continue.  The mildness of Lake [Winser?] will have been favourable to Mr. Littlefield more especially.  Here the chain of sickness may almost be said to have been unbroken, by the interposition of cold weather.  We have had many deaths in our town and its neighborhood, tho’ our family has hitherto escaped.  I speak only of our Williamsburg family, for my unfortunate son has lost the eldest of his two sons & on the last day of Feby. his wife fell a victim to pleurisy & miscarriaged worsted. She left two children - a daughter 9 years old last October & a son who will be 2 the coming May - Charles was himself very sick when his [messenger?] left him.  The loss of this dear girl is a great affliction to us, & more as from their removal unto a new house in a Forest situation, we had hoped they might hereafter be blessed with better health than at the river place where they lived before. [Though sighted?] moralist! We lay our plans & build our hopes - but we can go no farther Mr Tucker, tho' always laboring under a variety of petty maladies - has escaped this winter the dreadful scourge that attended them thro' the last.  His appetite is good & regular, & he is able to indulge it reasonably with impunity