LETTERS AND LOVE-LETTERS

WE

HAT a curious thing is the imperishability of a letter. Years after the writer is dead and forgotten, a letter, yellow with age, its ink dim, its folds falling apart, may rise up as alive in sentiment, as merciless in reference to statement, as accurate as to facts as if its date had been written yesterday. Spotless reputations have ere now been smirched and stained by the unearthing of that most fatal among human documents, an ordinary letter. Light has been thrown upon state secrets and a cold blast of air scattered the dust of royal closets, all through the discovery of letters concealed for a century or two. It would seem almost as if the vitality of the never-dying soul, supreme and triumphant over the dying body, asserted itself and took its defiant stand in a letter, a thing scrawled by human fingers on so slight a stuff as parchment or paper.

Love letters have been found between the folds of books, letters which by some wretched mischance never reached their destination. Phyllis, poor maid, pined away or else married the wrong man, because Stephen's letter never reached her hand, and years pass, and another maiden of the family reads the quaint missive that meant so much and achieved so little.

Angry letters indited in moments of vehement indignation have separated chief friends. Resentful words, spoken, had made only a superficial wound, but written, they pierced with a stiletto's stabbing sharpness deep beneath the tissues of self love and they are never forgiven.

"Destroy my letters," wrote a brilliant woman to a lifelong correspondent. "Since E's memoir has been published and her intimate letters have been spread out for everybody

to read, I have taken fright. I don't want my letters put in a book after my decease."

By an odd coincidence, noted because the ink on this epistle was hardly dry, the recipient met a friend a few hours after who said casually, "You hear often from do you not? Somebody should keep track of her letters. They will make a charming volume after she is gone!" The bulk of biographical literature is composed of letters, and it is interesting because the letters are unintentional revelations of those who wrote them, showing them as it were in undress, declaring their innermost feelings and exploiting their good sense or their folly. There is indeed something tragic about a letter, looked at as a document infused with at least earthly immortality.

Shall we have letters in heaven? Bunyan seems to have thought so, for in his all but divine dream, the post brought to Mr. Standfast, to Christian, and others the message summoning them to the Court of the King. And what is Revelation, that splendid succession of heavenly visions beheld by John the Beloved, but a succession of letters from the golden shore! If we need letters for our felicity there, where "the daylight is serene," be sure we shall have them.

Letters have a very singular individuality. By no chance, for instance, does a bill ever resemble any other letter. It probably arrives with other letters in the guise of friendliness, but it is more like a policeman in plain clothes than anything else one can think of. Demand on value received sticks out of it through the thickest envelope, and it lifts its front with a certain arrogant challenge, especially if the purse be low, and the debtor a spendthrift. One does not need to be a mind reader to know at a glance which letter comes from an old college chum, which from a long silent friend, and which from the grocer.

There are the letters with black edges, sadly indicative of sorrow. Grief has visited the home. Here is its badge. And this aristocratic square or oblong envelope, smooth,

creamy and complacent, is the mercury of bliss; it brings a wedding announcement. This dear little letter, in careful, well-shaped script, is a child's first effort, bless her precious heart and dimpled hands. Here is a husband's letter to the loving wife at home. Let us hope it is not signed "Aff. yours," but is expansive and caressing and full of comfort to the lonely heart. A son's weekly letter to the old people on the farm, a mother's letter to her boy in town, an evident business letter properly addressed on the typewriter, a letter to one in prison, to one on a deathbed, to or from one in a far country. Oh, the letters in the postman's bag, the mystery and romance and rippling laughter and muffled moan of agony, that are all crowded together in that heavy pack.

The moral of it is, if moral there be, take pains with your letter-writing. No idle business this, but serious and intense and worth doing with the very best you can.

THE GIRL WHO DOES NOT WANT TO MARRY

I

AM sure, if I may judge from the reports of the past, that the girl who does not want to marry is a product of our own times. In bygone days, women hated and loathed the idea of a single life, and dreaded unspeakably the reproach of being styled old maids. It is on record in the Scripture, that in certain contingencies seven women would take hold of one man, crying, "Only let me be called by thy name," and certainly, though this is partly due to the conceit of men, the latter have often complained that they were pursued. A man once said to me, "I am most careful never to pay any marked attention to a girl. I do not wish to raise false hopes in her mind!" He was not a very attractive man, and I resented his remark on behalf of the girls in his social set. But this was several years ago.

The fact is, that there are many young women today who would be most reluctant to give up their independent life, their good salaries, and the comforts they enjoy in their agreeable occupations, for the sake of a husband, whose caprices they must endure, and whose clothing they must mend. They know little of domestic life, because they have gone straight from the schoolroom to the counter or the typewriter, and they have no fitness for managing a home. This they know.

I think it is the greatest of misfortunes that so large a class as the wage-earning young women of the land compose, should, with few exceptions, be ignorant of practical housewifery, but they are. In the times when women stayed at home, and were supported by fathers and brothers, as a

matter of course, they were anxious to have a home of their own, and a good man to labor for them, and they did then know how to bear their end of the load.

Another reason complicates the situation. With their far greater quickness and their power of easy adjustment, young women of the ordinary type who have been to grammar and high school are better educated and better mannered than the men who seek them as wives. The latter had to go to work very early, and have not had time to study the niceties which women like and acquire with ease. The young working girl, especially if she has read novels of romance in her hours of leisure, has dreams of a different and more polished husband from the honest and straightforward fellow who applies for her hand.

"I respect Mr. —," said one such young woman, a stenographer of no mean ability; "he is a good man, and he is doing well, but I cannot bring myself to love him. His trousers are never properly creased, and he wears such horrid ties!"

The new attitude of young women to marriage inevitably provokes a similar indifference on the part of young men. Something is wrong, and should be set right, for the present prevalent cynicism in young and marriageable people is opposed to nature and reason.

The saving clause, so to speak, in the situation, is the fact that Mother Nature is, and from Eden onward, has been an inveterate match-maker. Young people, however prudent, however equal to their own support, do fall in love still, in the good old-fashioned way. And then, being in love, objections vanish; the lover is seen through a golden haze, the girl and the man each realize that here is the ideal they have always cherished in their secret hearts. They marry, and in the great majority of cases are happy ever after, as God meant wedded folk to be.