rt, while in this glow, would be ashamed of his letter in print,
but this is one of the cases where chancery would step in and protect
one from himself by his next friend. This is really a delicate matter,
and perhaps it is brutal to allude to it at all.

In truth, the letter would hardly be interesting in print. Love has a
marvelous power of vivifying language and charging the simplest words
with the most tender meaning, of restoring to them the power they had
when first coined. They are words of fire to those two who know their
secret, but not to others. It is generally admitted that the best
love-letters would not make very good literature. "Dearest," begins
Herbert, in a burst of originality, felicitously selecting a word whose
exclusiveness shuts out all the world but one, and which is a whole
letter, poem, confession, and creed in one breath. What a weight of
meaning it has to carry! There may be beauty and wit and grace and
naturalness and even the splendor of fortune elsewhere, but there is one
woman in the world whose sweet presence would be compensation for the
loss of all else. It is not to be reasoned about; he wants that one; it
is her plume dancing down the sunny street that sets his heart beating;
he knows her form among a thousand, and follows her; he longs to run
after her carriage, which the cruel coachman whirls out of his sight. It
is marvelous to him that all the world does not want her too, and he is
in a panic when he thinks of it. And what exquisite flattery is in that
little word addressed to her, and with what sweet and meek triumph she
repeats it to herself, with a feeling that is not altogether pity for
those who still stand and wait. To be chosen out of all the available
world--it is almost as much bliss as it is to choose. "All that long,
long stage-ride from Blim's to Portage I thought of you every moment,
and wondered what you were doing and how you were looking just that
moment, and I found the occupation so charming that I was almost sorry
when the journey was ended." Not much in that! But I have no doubt the
Young Lady read it over and over, and dwelt also upon every moment, and
found in it new proof of unshaken constancy, and had in that and the
like things in the letter a sense of the sweetest communion. There is
nothing in this letter that we need dwell on it, but I am convinced that
the mail does not carry any other letters so valuable as this sort.

I suppose that the appearance o