till
legible, beginning: "My Dearest Life and Love."

"Matter is indestructible," so the scientists say, but what of the
love-letter that is reduced to ashes? Does its passion live again in
some far-off violet flame, or, rising from its dust, bloom once more
in a fragrant rose, to touch the lips of another love?

In countless secret places, the tender missives are hidden, for the
lover must always keep his joy in tangible form, to be sure that it
was not a dream. They fly through the world by day and night, like
white-winged birds that can say, "I love you"--over mountain, hill,
stream, and plain; past sea and lake and river, through the desert's
fiery heat and amid the throbbing pulses of civilisation, with never
a mistake, to bring exquisite rapture to another heart and wings of
light to the loved one's soul.

Under the pillow of the maiden, her lover's letter brings visions of
happiness too great for the human heart to hold. Even in her dreams,
her fingers tighten upon his letter--the visible assurance of his
unchanging and unchangeable love.

When the bugle sounds the charge, and dimly through the flash and
flame the flag signals "Follow!" many a heart, leaping to answer with
the hot blood of youth, finds a sudden tenderness in the midst of its
high courage, from the loving letter which lies close to the soldier's
breast.

Bunker Hill and Gettysburg, Moscow and the Wilderness, Waterloo,
Mafeking, and San Juan--the old blood-stained fields and the modern
scenes of terror have all alike known the same message and the same
thrill. The faith and hope of the living, the kiss and prayer of the
dying, the cries of the wounded, and the hot tears of those who have
parted forever, are on the blood-stained pages of the love-letters
that have gone to war.

"_Ich liebe Dich_," "_Je t'aime_," or, in our dear English speech, "I
love you,"--it is all the same, for the heart knows the universal
language, the words of which are gold, bedewed with tears that shine
like precious stones.

Every attic counts old love-letters among its treasures, and when the
rain beats on the roof and grey swirls of water are blown against the
pane, one may sit among the old trunks and boxes and bring to light
the loves of days gone by.

The little hair-cloth trunk, with its rusty lock and broken hinges,
brings to mind a rosy-cheeked girl in a poke bonnet, who went
a-visiting in the stage-coach. Inside is the bonnet itself--white,
with a gorg