ter began
abruptly:

You will not know by whom this is written. Do not seek to
know--now or ever. It is only from behind the veil of your
ignorance of my identity that I can ever write to you fully
and freely as I wish to write--can say what I wish to say in
words denied to a formal and conventional expression of
sympathy. Dear lady, let me say to you thus what is in my
heart.

I know what your sorrow is, and I think I know what your
loneliness must be--the sorrow of a broken tie, the loneliness
of a life thrown emptily back on itself. I know how you loved
your father--how you must have loved him if those eyes and
brow and mouth speak truth, for they tell of a nature divinely
rich and deep, giving of its wealth and tenderness
ungrudgingly to those who are so happy as to be the objects of
its affection. To such a nature bereavement must bring a depth
and an agony of grief unknown to shallower souls.

I know what your father's helplessness and need of you meant
to you. I know that now life must seem to you a broken and
embittered thing and, knowing this, I venture to send this
greeting across the gulf of strangerhood between us, telling
you that my understanding sympathy is fully and freely yours,
and bidding you take heart for the future, which now, it may
be, looks so heartless and hopeless to you.

Believe me, dear lady, it will be neither. Courage will come
to you with the kind days. You will find noble tasks to do,
beautiful and gracious duties waiting along your path. The
pain and suffering of the world never dies, and while it
lives there will be work for such as you to do, and in the
doing of it you will find comfort and strength and the highest
joy of living. I believe in you. I believe you will make of
your life a beautiful and worthy thing. I give you Godspeed
for the years to come. Out of my own loneliness I, an unknown
friend, who has never clasped your hand, send this message to
you. I understand--I have always understood--and I say to you:
"Be of good cheer."

To say that this strange letter was a mystery to me seems an
inadequate way of stating the matter. I was completely bewildered, nor
could I even guess who the writer might be, think and ponder as I
might.

The letter itself implied that the writer was a stranger. The
handwriting was evidently that of a