Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1885 — How to Write Love Letters. [ARTICLE]

How to Write Love Letters.

Prudence is rarely thought of. Discretion is at a discount. The future is the present. Vows are made which in calmer momenta are. regretted, and promises are passed which unhappily, though knots tied with the pen, cannot be unloosed with the teeth. It is just such letters as these which are kept, sold, and in time printed. For anything they contain out of the beaten run of modish sentiments and superficial philosophy, the epistles of the Abelards and the Heloises, of the Strephons and the Chloes, the Clarissas and even of the Marlowes, might be pasted on a church-door. But of all letters, those most certain to bp preserved are the ones which ought to be Soonest destroyed. Long after the feelings which dictated them have vanished, the wronged wife or the injured mistress will cherish those memorials of happier days, and the archives of every sound-hearted woman contain trbigger or smaller parcel of like import. Even the “angular figure in the bombazine” the “Autocrat” discovered cherished the memory of a rustic “Hiram.” A man, or it may be a woman, writes loveletters long before he or she is within measurable distance of fame, and then, after their names lend value to their chatter, some literary resurrectionist makes capital put of their foolishness. In later years they are more wary. But at that time of life most people’s sweethearting has come to a It is, indeed, open to debate when any honorable man is justified in keeping a private note. No one would of going home and entering down in writing the conversation of his friends on every theme that turns up, and then getting the precis so drawn out witnessed. Yet a letter is, ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, simply the substitute for a verbal query or reply. It -is perhaps useless, knowing the twists of human contrariety, mend prudent persons to burn every document which is of no business value, or which they do not wish to be published after their death, or to pass into the stranger’s hands. Yet doing so, the best plan would be, as some one has suggested, to write all such evanescing epistles as love-letters, in “sympathetic ink.’’ The art of the chemist has devised a fluid which will preserve the characters traced with it long enough for all useful purposes. But just when they begin to be mischievous, when the blackmailer thinks his prey ripe for the bleeding, and the woman scorned begins to haunt the stairs in Chancery Lane, laden with the tell-tale package, all she will have for her “proofs” will be a score or two of blank pages. Everything will have gone. Vows, promises, and poetry will have disappeared as completely as the passing madness which dictates them, and the calculating damsel will return a sadder. but. a wiser woman than she set out. — London World.