It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps
I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I
don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual
charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
novelty. Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable
man a lifetime.
-- Thomas Aldrich
