January 3, 2017
Dear Mr. Adams,
Your cousin sent me one of his electronic letters. I concur it is time we shed the tattered overcoat of despair that has cloaked our wounded character and breathe in the new year with restored vigor. I also unfriended many of Chad’s mutual friends and that has been a fine help.
As ever Sir, you are as righteous as you are rotund. A mind and body in fair health, however rotund, shall indeed leave us better positioned for the affairs and trials that lie before us. I pray too that you stay hydrated. It is presumably of great import. Young women today imbibe in such an abundance of water in such a variety of Nalgene containers, that I had questioned whether our institution had procured a salt lick. A fair query, with the other recreations available on campus, but a query that may have had a negative impact on my doomed campaign.
You must agree that a man’s constitution however is determined most not by that which can be consumed, infused or extracted, or even meditated upon, but by affairs of the heart. Harmony in the marriage state shall be the first and finest aim. I thus envy your domestic fireside and the example of strength that your union has gifted our Union, and confess fear that such a bond with my fair Ayesha will, for me, remain ever elusive.
Christmas break has been for us a torment. I would meet whatever catastrophe to please her and still her father is suspicious of my intentions. I have affirmed that his maiden possesses the qualities of modesty, beauty, and softness of disposition that are the finest ornaments of her fair sex, and still he answers only with invectives and inquisition, unimpressed with my uncertain vocation, dalliances with finer arts and what he calls “gay ass contraptions.”
And at present, my dear Ayesha is no more agreeable. Though our embraces have become ever more amorous, she has become ever more wary, fits of silent tears and somber musings on the Supreme Court. She has invoked the name of Merrick Garland with greater frequent than my own. Judge Garland may never appear in our high court’s chamber, but he has found a permanent home in the language of my boudoir.
You can calculate, and without many figures, the extent of this mortification to me. Though I may remain mortified, I remain devoted as much as I am your obedient and humble servant,
