<h2 style="color: red;">Love Letters: Old and New</h2>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Average
Love
Letter</div>
<p>The average love letter is sufficient to make
a sensitive spinster weep, unless she
herself is in love and the letter be addressed to
her. The first stage of the tender passion
renders a man careless as to his punctuation,
the second seriously affects his spelling, and
in the last period of the malady, his grammar
develops locomotor ataxia. The single blessedness
of school-teachers is largely to be
attributed to this cause.</p>
<p>A real love letter is absolutely ridiculous to
everyone except the writer and the recipient.
A composition, which repeats the same term
of endearment thirteen times on a page, has
certainly no particular claim to literary art.</p>
<p>When a man writes a love letter, dated, and
fully identified by name and address, there is
no question but that he is in earnest. A large
number of people consider nothing so innocently
entertaining as love letters, read in a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></SPAN></span>
court-room, with due attention to effect, by
the counsel for the other side.</p>
<p>Affairs of that kind are given scarlet headlines
in the saffron journals, and if the letters
are really well done, it means the sale of an
"extra." No man can hope to write anything
which will possess such general interest
as his love letters. If Shakespeare had written
voluminously to his sweetheart—to any of his
sweethearts—and the letters should be found
by this generation, what a hue and cry would
be raised over his peaceful ashes!</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Sins of
Commission</div>
<p>Doing the things which ought not to be
done never loses fascination and charm. The
rare pleasure thus obtained far exceeds the
enjoyment of leaving undone things which
ought to be done. Sins of commission are
far more productive of happiness than the sins
of omission.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">For Posterity</div>
<p>Thus people whose sense of honour would
not permit them to read an open letter which
belonged to someone else will go by thousands
to purchase the published letters of some
famous man. Dr. Arbuthnot, in speaking of
the publication of letters, said that it added a
new terror to death, so true it is that while a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></SPAN></span>
man may think for the present, he unavoidably
writes for posterity.</p>
<p>No passion is too sacred to be hidden from
the eagle eye of the public. The death of anyone
of more than passing fame is followed by
a volume of "letters." It is pathetic to read
these posthumous pages, which should have
been buried with the hands that wrote them,
or consigned to the never-failing mercy of the
flames.</p>
<p>Burial has not always sufficed. The manuscript
of one well-known book of poems was
buried with the lady to whom they were
written, but in later years her resting-place
was disturbed, with the consent of her lover,
for this very manuscript.</p>
<p>Her golden hair had grown after her death,
and was found closely entwined with the
written pages—so closely that it had to be cut.
The loving embrace which Death would not
break was rudely forced to yield. Even in her
"narrow house" she might not keep her love
letters in peace, since the public wanted to
read what had been written for her alone and
the publisher was waiting for "copy."</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Letters in
a Grave</div>
<p>In a paper of the <i>Tatler</i>, written by Addison<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></SPAN></span>
or Steele, or possibly by both, is described a
party in a country village which is suddenly
broken into confusion by the entrance of the
sexton of their parish church, fresh from
the digging of a grave. The sexton tells the
merrymakers how a chance blow of his pickaxe
has opened a decayed coffin, in which are
discovered several papers.</p>
<p>These are found to be the love letters received
by the wife of Sir Thomas Chichley,
one of the admirals of King William. Most
of the letters were ruined by damp and
mould, but "here and there," says the <i>Tatler</i>,
"a few words such as 'my soul,' 'dearest,'
'roses,' and 'my angel,' still remained legible,
resisting the corrupting influence of Time."</p>
<p>One of these letters in a grave, which Lady
Chichley had requested might be buried with
her in her coffin, was found entire, though
discoloured by the lapse of twenty years.
Its words were these:</p>
<p>"<span class="smcap">Madam</span>:</p>
<p>"If you would know the greatness of my
love, consider that of your own beauty.
That blooming countenance, that snowy<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></SPAN></span>
bosom, that graceful person, return every
moment to my imagination; the brightness
of your eyes hindered me from closing mine
since I last saw you. You may still add to
your beauties by a smile. A frown will
make me the most wretched of men, as I am
the most passionate of lovers."</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Advertisement</div>
<p>Death is the advertisement, at the end of
an autobiography, wherein people discover
its virtues. The public which refused a bare
subsistence to the living genius will make
his children comfortable by generously purchasing
his letters, which were never meant
for them.</p>
<p>The pathetic story of the inner struggle,
which would have crucified the sensitive soul
were it known to any save his dearest friends,
is proudly blazoned forth—in print! Hopes
and fears and trials are no longer concealed.
Illness, poverty, and despair are given rubricated
pages. The sorrowful letter to a friend,
asking for five or ten dollars, is reproduced in
facsimile.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Soldier of
the World</div>
<p>That it shows the human side of the genius
is no excuse for the desecration. What of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></SPAN></span>
the sunny soul who always sang courage,
while he himself was suffering from hope deferred!
What of him who wrote in an attic,
often hungry for his daily bread, and took
care to give the impression of warmth and
comfort! Why should his stern necessity be
disclosed to the public that would not give
him bread in return for his songs? It is
enough to make the gallant soldier of the
world turn uneasily in his grave.</p>
<p>In this way a bit of the greatness so bravely
won is often lost, and sometimes illusions are
dispelled which all must regret. For years,
we have read with delight Mrs. Browning's
exquisite poem beginning:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"I have a name, a little name<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Uncadenced for the ear."<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>Throughout the poem there is no disclosure,
but, so sure is her art, that there is no sense
of loss or wonder. But the pitiless searchlight
of the century is turned upon the
Browning love letters, and thus we learn that
Mrs. Browning's pet name was <i>Ba</i>!</p>
<p>Pretty enough, perhaps, when spoken by a
lover and a poet, or in shaded nooks, to the
music of Italian streams, but quite unsuited to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></SPAN></span>
the present, even though it were to be read
only by lovers equally fond.</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Though I write books, it will be read<br/></span>
<span class="i2">Upon the page of none—"<br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>Poor Mrs. Browning! Little did she
know!</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">With the
Future in
View</div>
<p>There have been some, no doubt, who have
written with the future in view, though
Abelard, who broke a woman's heart, could
not have foreseen that his only claims to distinction
would rest upon his letters to loving,
faithful Héloise. The life which was to be
too great for her to share is remembered now
only because of her. Mocking Fate has
brought the wronged woman an exquisite
revenge.</p>
<p>That delightful spendthrift and scapegrace,
Richard Steele, has left a large number of
whimsical letters, addressed to the lady he
married. She might possibly object to their
publication, but not Steele! Indeed, she was
a foolish woman to keep this letter:</p>
<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Prue:</span></p>
<p>"The afternoon coach will bring you ten
pounds. Your letter shows that you are pas<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></SPAN></span>sionately
in love with me. But we must take
our portion of life without repining and I consider
that good nature, added to the beautiful
form God has given you, would make our
happiness too great for human life. Your
most obliged husband and most humble
servant,</p>
<p><span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 10em;">Rich. Steele.</span>"<br/></p>
<p>Alexander Pope was another who wrote for
posterity. In spite of his deformity, he appears
to have been touched to the heart by
women, but vanity and selfishness tinged all
of his letters.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Systematic
Lovers</div>
<p>Robert Burns was a systematic lover of anything
in petticoats, and has left such a mass
of amatory correspondence that his biographer
was sorely perplexed. There could not have
been a pretty maid in the British Isles, to
whom chance had been kind, who had not
somewhere the usual packet of love letters
from "Bobby" Burns.</p>
<p>Laurence Sterne was no less generous with
his affection, if the stories are true. At
twenty, he fell in love with Elizabeth Lumley,
and from his letters to her, one might easily
fancy that love was a devastating and hopeless<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></SPAN></span>
disease. There was a pretty little "Kitty"
who claimed his devotion, and countless other
affairs, before "Eliza" appeared. "Eliza"
was a married woman and apparently the
last love of the heart-scarred Sterne.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Left by
the Dead</div>
<p>No earthly thing is so nearly immortal as a
love letter, and nothing is so sorrowful as
those left by the dead. The beautiful body
may be dust and all but forgotten, while the
work of the loving hands lives on. Even
those written by the ancient Egyptians are
seemingly imperishable. The clay tablet on
which one of the Pharaohs wrote a love letter,
asking the hand of a foreign princess, is to-day
in the British Museum.</p>
<p>The first time a woman cries after she is
married, she reads over all the love letters the
other men have written her, for a love letter is
something a tender-hearted woman cannot
bring herself to destroy.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The New
Child</div>
<p>The love letters of the man she did not
marry still possess lingering interest. The
letters of many a successful man of affairs
are still hidden in the treasure-box of the
woman he loved, but did not marry. Both
have formed other ties and children have risen<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></SPAN></span>
up to call them blessed, or whatever the
children may please, for even more dreadful
than the new woman is the new child. Between
them, they are likely to produce a new
man.</p>
<p>The new child is apt to find the letters and
read them aloud to the wrong people, being
most successfully unexpected and inopportune.
A box of old letters, distributed sparingly
at the doors of mutual friends, is the
distinguishing feature of a lovely game called
"playing postman." Social upheavals have
occurred from so small a cause as this.</p>
<p>It sometimes happens, too, that when a girl
has promised to marry a man and the wedding
day is set, she receives from a mutual friend a
package of faded letters and a note which runs
something like this:</p>
<p>"<span class="smcap">My Dear:</span></p>
<p>"Now that my old friend's wedding day is
approaching, I feel that I have no longer the
right to keep his letters. They are too beautiful
and tender to be burned and I have not
the heart to make that disposition of them.
Were I to return them to him, he would<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></SPAN></span>
doubtless toss them into the fire, and I cannot
bear to have them lost.</p>
<p>"So, after thinking about it for some time,
I have concluded to send them to you, who
are the rightful keeper of his happiness, as
well as of his letters. I trust that you may
find a place for these among those which he
has addressed to you. Wishing you all happiness
in the future, believe me to be</p>
<p>"Very sincerely and affectionately yours."</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">On the
Firing
Line</div>
<p>The dainty and appropriate wedding gift is
not often shown to the happy man, but every
page and every line is carefully read. Now
and then the bride-elect advances boldly to the
firing line and writes a letter of thanks after
this fashion:</p>
<p>"It is very sweet and thoughtful of you,
my dear friend, to send me the letters. Of
course I shall keep them in with mine, though
I have but few, for the dear boy has never
been able to leave me for more than a day,
since first we met.</p>
<p>"Long before we became engaged, he
made me a present of your letters to him,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></SPAN></span>
which he said were well worth the reading,
and indeed, I have found them so. I shall
arrange them according to date and sequence,
though I observe that you have written much
more often than he—I suppose because we
foolish women can never say all we want to
in one letter and are compelled to add postscripts,
sometimes days apart.</p>
<p>"Believe me, I fully appreciate your wishes
for our happiness. I trust you may come to
us often and see how your hopes are fulfilled.
With many thanks for your loving thought of
me, as ever,</p>
<p>Affectionately yours."</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">If a Girl is
in Love</div>
<p>If a girl is in love, she carries the last letter
inside her shirt-waist in the day time, and puts
it under her pillow at night, thereby expecting
dreams of the beloved.</p>
<p>But the dispenser of nocturnal visions delights
in joking, and though impalpable arms
may seem to surround the sleeping spinster
and a tender kiss may be imprinted upon her
lips, it is not once in seventeen days that the
caresses are bestowed by the writer of the letter.
It is a politician whose distorted picture<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></SPAN></span>
has appeared in the evening paper, some man
the girl despises, the postman, or worse
yet, the tramp who has begged bread at the
door.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">When a
Man is in
Love</div>
<p>When a man is in love, he carries the girl's
last letter in his pocket until he has answered
it and has another to take its place. He
stoops to no such superstition as placing it
under his pillow. Neither is it read as often
as his letters to her.</p>
<p>A woman never really writes to the man
she loves. She simply records her fleeting
moods—her caprice, her tenderness, and her
dreams. Because of this, she is often misunderstood.
If the letter of to-day is different
from that of yesterday, her lover, in his heart
at least, accuses her of fickleness.</p>
<p>A man's letters to a girl are very frequently
shown to her most intimate friend, if they
are sufficiently ardent, but a man never shows
the letters of a woman he truly cares for,
unless he feels the need of some other masculine
intellect to assist him in comprehending
the lady of his heart.</p>
<p>"Nothing feeds the flame like a letter. It
has intent, personality, secrecy." But that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></SPAN></span>
is love indeed which stands the test of long
separation—and letters.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">A Single
Drop of
Ink</div>
<p>With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the
old Egyptian sorcerer promised to reveal the
past and foretell the future. The single drop
of ink with which a lover writes may sadly
change the blissful future of which he dreams.</p>
<p>The written word is so sadly different from
that which is spoken! The malicious demon
concealed in the ink bottle delights in wrecking
love. Misunderstandings and long silences
follow in rapid succession, tenderness
changes to coldness, and love to bitter regret.</p>
<p>Someone has said that the true test of
congeniality is not a matter of tastes, but of
humour. If two people find the same things
amusing, their comradeship is a foregone
conclusion, but even so, it requires unusual
insight to distinguish the playful parts of a
letter from the serious passages. If the separated
lovers would escape the pit of destruction,
let all jokes be plainly marked with
a cross or a star.</p>
<p>A letter is an unfair thing. It follows its
own mood blindly without reference to
others. If penned in sadness it often makes<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></SPAN></span>
a sunny day a cloudy one, and if written
in jest it may be as inopportune as mirth at a
funeral.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Misunderstood</div>
<p>A letter betraying anger and hurt pride
may often crystallise a yielding mood into
determination and summon evil spirits which
love cannot banish. The letter asking forgiveness
may cross the path of the one which
puts an end to everything. It would seriously
test the power of the Egyptian to foretell
what might result from a single letter, written
in all love and tenderness, perhaps, but destined
to be completely misunderstood.</p>
<p>Old love letters often mean tears, because
they have been so wrongly read. Later years,
with fine irony, sometimes bring new understanding
of the loving heart behind the faulty
lines. After all, it is the inexpressible atmosphere
of a letter which is felt, rather than the
meaning which the phrases ostensibly convey.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Postman</div>
<p>Tender secrets are concealed in the weather-worn
bag of the postman. The lovers may
hide their hearts from all but him. Parents,
guardians, and even mature maiden aunts
may be successfully diverted, but not the
postman!<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>He knows that the girl who eagerly watches
for him in the morning has more than a passing
interest in the mail. He knows where
her lover is, how often he writes, when she
should have a letter, and whether all is well.</p>
<p>Sometimes, too, he knows that it is better
to take a single letter to the house three or
four times in succession, rather than to leave
it in the hands of one to whom it is not
addressed.</p>
<p>Blessed be the countless Cupids in the uniform
of the postal service! The little blind
god is wont to assume strange forms, apparently
at will. But no stern parent could
suspect that his sightless eyes were concealed
behind the spectacles of a sedate postman,
nor that his wicked arrows were hidden under
piles of letters.</p>
<p>The uninitiated wonder "what there is to
write about." A man may have seen a girl
the evening before, and yet a bulky letter
comes in the afternoon. And what mysterious
interest can make one write three or four
times a week?</p>
<p>Where is the girl whose love letter was left
in pawn because she could not find her purse?<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></SPAN></span>
The grizzled veteran never collects the "two
cents due" on the love letters that are a little
overweight. He would not put a value upon
anything so precious, and he is seldom a
cynic—perhaps because, more than anyone
else, he is the dispenser of daily joy.</p>
<p>The reading of old love letters is in some
way associated with hair-cloth trunks, mysterious
attics, and rainy days. The writers
may be unknown and the hands that laid
them away long since returned to dust, but
the interest still remains.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Dead
Roses</div>
<p>Dead roses crumble to ashes in the gentle
fingers that open the long folded pages—the
violets of a forgotten spring impart a delicate
fragrance to the yellowed spot on which
they lay. The ink is faded and the letter
much worn, as though it had lain next to
some youthful breast, to be read in silence
and solitude until the tender words were
graven upon the heart in the exquisite script
of Memory.</p>
<p>The phrasing has a peculiar quaintness, old
fashioned, perhaps, but with a grace and dignity
all its own. Through the formal, stately
sentences the hidden sweetness creeps like<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></SPAN></span>
the crimson vine upon the autumn leaves.
Brave hearts they had, those lovers of the
past, who were making a new country in the
wilderness, and yet there was an unsuspected
softness—the other "soul side" which even
a hero may have, "to show a woman when
he loves her."</p>
<p>There are other treasures to be found with
the letters—old daguerreotypes, in ornate
cases, showing the girlish, sweet face of her
who is a grandmother now, or perhaps a
soldier in the trappings of war, the first of a
valiant line.</p>
<p>There are songs which are never sung, save
as a quavering lullaby to some mite who will
never remember the tune, and fragments of
nocturnes or simple melodies, which awaken
the past as surely as the lost shell brings
to the traveller inland the surge and thunder
of the distant sea.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Mysteries
of
Life and
Death</div>
<p>All the mysteries of life and death are
woven in with the letters; those pathetic
remembrances which the years may fade but
never destroy. There are old school books,
dog-eared and musty, scraps of rich brocade
and rustling taffeta, the yellowed sampler<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></SPAN></span>
which was the daily trial of some little maid,
and the first white robe of someone who
has grown children of his own.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Memory's
Singing</div>
<p>Give Memory an old love letter and listen
to her singing. There is quiet at first, as
though she were waiting for some step to
die away, or some childish laughter to cease.
Then there is a hushed arpeggio, struck from
strings which are old and worn, but sweet
and tender still.</p>
<p>Sometimes the song is of an old farmhouse
on the western plains, where life meant struggle
and bitter privation. Brothers and sisters,
in the torn, faded clothes which were all they
had; father's tremulous "God bless you,"
when someone went away. Mother's never-ending
toil, and the day when her roughened
hands were crossed upon her breast, at rest
for the first time, while the children cried in
wonder and fear.</p>
<p>Then the plaintive minor swells for a moment
into the full major chord, when Love,
the King, in royal purple, took possession of
the desolate land. Corn huskings and the
sound of "Money Musk," scarlet ears and
stolen kisses under the harvest moon, youth<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></SPAN></span>
and laughter, and the eternal, wavering hope
for better things. Long years of toil, with
interludes of peace and divine content, little
voices, and sometimes a little grave. Separation
and estrangement, trust and misgiving,
heartache and defeat.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">A Magic
in the
Strings</div>
<p>The tears may start at Memory's singing,
but as the song goes on there comes peace,
for there is a magic in the strings which
changes sadness into something sweet.
Memory's eyes are deep and tender and her
heart is full of compassion. So the old love
letters bring happiness after all—like the smile
which sometimes rests upon the faces of
the dead.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></SPAN></span></p>
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