Montrose - Jan. 5th, 1866

With mingled emotions of pleasure and pain I have seated myself this evening to address you my kind friend (Oh that I could call you by some dearer name), on a subject which is at once the most sacred and solemn, and which excites the purest, deepest and tender emotions of the human heart. (The human heart, how strange, how mysterious it is, at once susceptible of the purest, most ennobling emotions to the lowest, most degraded passions.) I have to acknowledge a deep, warm attachment for one who has ever been my truest, kindest friend. For the friendship I am truly grateful, how cold the term friend is to the warm and loving heart. It requires much, very much more than this, and can only be satisfied with a passion not only as warm, deep and tender, but equally as pure. You, dearest, are constantly in my thoughts, and every throb of my heart is for you. My every thought but some new wish for your happiness. I offer you a heart warm and loving. Will you and can you accept it, and my heart is too full to say more. Would that I possess the pen of a ready writer, to pour out in burning words, or that "Holy muse" would linger for me to inspire me with a song worthy of the subject, that I might at last finally express my devotion for you. You have certainly long known that I loved you devotedly and that you treated me so kindly, gives me some ground to hope that I am not entirely indifferent to you. I have long wished to write fully my feelings, but fear of forfeiting what friendship you have heretofore had for me prevented. I have endured this cruel suspense too long. Justice to my own happiness demands that I now make this confession, and to trust and pray for a favorable answer.You will not I am confident, deny me a speedy answer to this when you are assured that all my hope of future happiness depends on your favorable answer. If you could know how devoted a heart was offered to you, you could but feel that such love, such devotion is seldom met with on this earth. Enough, I could write in this strain for pages, but most reluctantly bid you farewell. May Holy Angels be ever around you and so guard thy heart that not one unpure thought enter to mar its beauty, is the heartfelt prayer of,

Ever your devoted,

Bennie

(A later letter identifies the writer of this letter to Addie Jones as Bennie Thomas, who lived in Maury Co., TN.)