The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1859-08-17
The Old Letters.

q.
them in an old drawer up garnet. They
were carefully tied together with faded
blue ribbon, and VIC unfastened this with
little, quick shouts of laughter, and open
cd the 'eld letters"
Great sheets of foolscap they were, all
brown and stiff with age, and the hand
wiling was large, stiff, and painfully ex-
act. too, such as you might perhaps find
now in the copy book OF a boy OF thr-
teen.
any DEAR THANKFuL"-- commenced
Meribel. "Why. it's Grandma, as true
rs I'm alive; and these are Grandmas
love letters.
o, Fannie. and it's dated, June, 1894
That's more than sixty years ago. just
thipk of h!r'
So we settled dswn on the old garnet
floor and read letters, and Meribeps curls
brushed against my cheeks as her laugh
fiuttered up to old rafters at some quaint
EXPRESSION, or some ardent declaration OF
lifelong fondness and tenderness. Sure
IL, those old letters bore ample evidence
that the lovers of the eighteenth century
were quite ms ardent and devoted as those
of the nineteenth.
tseventeen hundred and ninety four"
said Meribel, who was studying German
s.that was the meridian of Goethe and
lean Paul Richter, and that was about
tho time of the French Revolution. 1t
doesn't seem so very long ago, to read OF
it."
We carried the letters, with triumphant
plee, down to Grandmother. She sat
there, knitting, by the fire, in her silver
spectacIes and white cap. Could that
bowed figure be the one those old letters
called slight and graceful" Could
those wrinkled, faded cheeks have once
been ssfall of the bloom of youth and
beauty" and those din, sunken eyes have
looked to the writer 'brighter than the
stars when they rose to glorify the sum-
mer eveningp Grandpa must have had
a vein of poetry in him. Perhaps every
man does, though, when he's in love; but
with most men, the dust of this world
soon gathers thick over their hearts, and,
work the vein as you will, there is no
moro gold there.
We laid the letters in her lap-those
letters, written when her youth was fresh
with springs and fragrant with blossoms.
She took them up, and the faintest flush
crossed, for moment, her withered
checks, as she peered at them through
her spectacles.
"Ah, they are Jacobs lettersp she
said and her wrinkled hands wandered
for moment, tenderly, over the great
coarse sheets, then she sighed, her knit
ting fell from her hands, and she sat lost
IN thought by the fire.
Somehow it touched us, Cousin Meri-
bel and l, and we couldn't rally her as we
had intended. Perhaps, too, the thought
struck sadly into our hearts, that some
time we might become gray, wrink'ed,
withered, old women, aud somebody
young and fair, out of whose life the rose
color was not blanched, might find letters
of ours. Ah, well! ali, well! aa
And we, too, should, like Grandmoth-
er, have nothing but thoughts and mem
oriss. Yes, we should, by the grace of
Sod, we should have sonnet ing bit these.
We should have then, what all the old
,nen have. the hope of a resurrection I'M
to youth immortal; the looking forward
to the home in the eternal country, where
no eyes ever grow dim peering through
the windows of time, where no form is
ever bowed with burden of years, no hairs
evor grow white beneath the hands that
caress them; we should have the eternal
youth, and beauty, and glory, which it
hath not entered into the heart of man to
conceive of. which God hath promised to
those thai love Him.-4rthur's Maya
zine.