The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-02-25
Love Letters. Washington Post,

Washington Post.
 The writing of love letters began at very early period of the worlds his- tory. We cannot bring documentary evidence to prove just where or how it begun, or who started it, for his- tory is hay when we undertake to get at the facts, away back near the time of the primal pair; but inasmuch as love was included in the original out fit of the human family, it must have been talked in Eden, and inasmuch as writing is merely talking at long range, it follows-the conclusion, we submit, is inevitable-that love letters passed between the first pair of lovers who happened to be separated after the invention of writing.
 If Adam and Eve had known how to write and could have guessed how much pleasure they could find in the new sensation, we have no doubt they would have parted from each other a few days just to indulge in epistolary communication. True, there was no general post office, no fast mails, no carrier system, no green stamps in their time, but they might have left their letters, as millions of their de- scendants have done, in hollow tree an apple tree, for instance-or under some loose stone on top of the garden wall. What relief from e,anui they would have found in such an exchange of vows and compliments and tender nothings.
 Why is it that the publication of love letters in courts of Jaw or in tile newspapers sends a snicker across the continent? Why do people, old and young, and of all sorts and condition, rush in crowds to the courts and al- most travel over each others heads to hear love letters read and then go home and laugh at them as if they had found something unique in the way of fun? Why do grave men and sober women skip all the sensible reading in a newspaper if it happens to contain love letter, and, having read that, laugh at it as if it were the latest and best of Gilbert's operatic jokes? Ten to one if all the old trunks in the old garrets were called to give up their treasures they would convict these grave men and sober women of just such "silliness," if they please to call it so, as that which excites their risibles. No man or woman was ever thoroughly in love-and not to have been there, we are informed, is to have missed some happiness, at least-who didn't say and do 'ssilly" things. Why, then, does everybody feel such an ire sistible inclination to poke fun at the manuscript love-making of an unfor- tunate whose letters get into the courts and papers. It is a mystery we shall not attempt to explain.
 There is one phase of this general subject that seems to call for special mention, to- wit the intensity that an aged swain puts into long range court ship and the peculiar zest with which other aged parties get their full of fun out of his written caresses There is nothing new in the torridity of an old mans love, provided its ob- ject be damsel of tender years. If we had She social statistics of the pa- triarchs-and we regret our inability to cite them on this occasion-we would prove that December has al- ways been falling in love with May. And if mathematical formula were applicable to matter of this kind, we could demonstrate that the heat of an old mans love for young woman is in the ratio of the square of his dis tance from her in years. Why make fun of universal trait?