but the laboriously-produced letter is a letter which killeth, and
contains no infusion of the spirit that giveth life. This is not the
writer's fault. It is and must be all but impossible, after a lapse
of time, to reproduce the natural reply to a remark, or to concoct
one that shall be vital and satisfactory to the other party.

Lovers, of all persons, it would seem, might with least danger
postpone answering each other's missives, since their common topic
of interest is always with them, and the _billet-doux_, after having
been carried in the bosom a week, is as fresh as when taken from the
post-office. What need for "sweet sixteen" to consume the very night
of its reception in essaying a reply, which she might have written
next week as well, since next week they two will stand in
substantially the same relations to one another as now? "Sweet
sixteen" smiles at such coldblooded logic. "To you others," thinks
she to herself, "all sunsets may be alike; but in our horizon are
constant changes, delicate tones of color, each

'Shade so finely touched love's sense must
seize it.'

The mood into which Walter's note put me may never return again.
Now it is correspondent to the mood in which he wrote; now or never
must I reply. In this way alone can we keep up a correspondence
between our natures."

But the stupid world will not accept, cannot even understand, these
fine sayings. It looks at the question with very different eyes from
those of lovers, boarding-school misses, and persons in the first
moon of a first marriage. The peculiar relations between them may