The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-01-23


graduated to suit the convenience OF
the writer's. Thus, if a. mere flirta- |
ton were the only thing contemplated, |
the written characters might disap-
pear in a week; if the sentiment OF
|affection existing between the parties
was of a moderately warm kind,
lease of six months life might be
granted to the correspondence; while
strictly platonic effusions might be al
lowed to remain legible for whole
year AS regards compromising letters,
the best thing to do would be TO make
use of an ink that would vanish in the
course of twenty-four hours; failing
the adoption of the more sensible
plan of not inditing compromising let
tiers at all. In any case, it would be
something like national boon II a
shorter tenure of existence were Sc
cured for love-letters. Men do not al
ways keep those more or less sincere
loutpourings of the burdened heart; but
women almost invariably store written
proteStationS of love in the Utmost
recesses of their desks, and in cases
where the lover proves unfaithful and is
guilty of the heinous crime of marry
ling somebody else the love-letters are
usually at hand to be produced in court
when an action for breach of promise
of marriage is brought. 1t is bad
enough, in all conscience, to be party
to a lawsuit, either as plaintiff or as
defendant; but untold agony is often
inflicted on the male defendant in a
breach of promise of marriage case
by the production and reading 'coram
publco" of the nonsense which he
has scrubbed to the lady who, at one
period or another, was the divinity
whom he worshped. The communica-
ton of the contents of the letters to
the court, to the jury, to the specta-
80. ND 11crI, +1an &c Of n a
press, to the public at large is, as a
rule, received with shouts of laughter
the people who laugh loudest being
probably those who, if they were
themselves in love, would not hesitate
to fill reams of note paper with stuff
quite as silly as that which makes the
gentlemen in wigs and gowns and the
twelve honest men In the box so up
Iroariously hilarious. Who, indeed, does
not write rubbish when he writes
llove-letter? The greatest geniuses
have proved themselves to be tenn
porarily the merest simpletons when
they corresponded with the fair ones
whom they professed to adore. Byron,
who was a very astute as well as a
aware of this fact. He was deter
mined, in his correspondence with
Lady Caroline Lamb, not to drift into
| the use of nonsensical phrases; so he
very quietly copied the most impas-
stoned of his letters from the we'll
known French work, Les Liaisons
IDangeruses," in which an imaginary
lover expresses in burning language
| his unalterable devotion to an imagi-
nary mistress. A sutton cognianzt of
the peril of publicity which always at
tends the writing of letters of this
description, might even do better than
effusions ''out of his own head" as the
popular locution phrases it, he tran
scribed his most fervent passages from
Jean Jacques Rousseau's ''Nouvelle
Heloise," or from Richardson's "Clar-
issa Harlowe. A master-stroke of de-
termination not to become ridiculous
| in love-letter writing was made by
the Scotch writer to the Signet, who
ALWAYS concluded his communications
with yours, dearest Madam, without
prejudice" But we can not all of us
be Scotch lawyers; and the bulk of
poor humanity, not having received
a legal education, whenever it gets a
pen in it's hand for the purpose Of
writing a letter to an attractive young
lady, is apt to indite the absurdest
balderdash that can well be con-
ceived.-London Telegraph.
The most touching love letters in
the world are perhaps those which
passed between Abelard and Heloise;
yet those immortal epistles are sprin-
killed. with absurdity, as when the alb
bess of the Paraclete asks her lover
whether she ought to allow her nuns
to wear "haut-de-chausSes Next,
perhaps in intensity Of passion and
leloquences Of diction, come the letters
of Mirabeau from his dungeon in the
bastile to Sophie; but the letters are
defaced and rendered odious by the
introduction of multitude of mean,
Iignoble, and often downright revolving
expressions. The ladies can be on oc-
casion as unsentimental as the gen
tlemen. Mary Wollstonecraft thus adj
dresses Gilbert Inlay: II write you
now on my knees imploring you to
send my child and the maid to Paris.
Let the maid have all my clothes.
Pay the cook her wages, and do not
mention the confession which I forced
from her. Nothing but my extreme
stupidity could have rendered me blind
so long; yet. while you have assured
me you had no other attachment we
might still have lived together Mary
was not ridiculous, but only sentiment
tai when she wrote to the same per
son: Thy lips then feel softer than
SOFT. and rest my cheek on thine,
forgetting all the world I have NOT
left the hue of love out of the picture
the rosy glow; and fancy has spread it
lover my own cheeks for 1 feel them
burning, whilst a delicious tear trem-
oles in my eye, that would be all your
own, II a grateful emotion, directed to
the rather of Nature, who has made
me thus alive to happiness, did NOT
lgive more warmth to the sentiment It
divides" Poor Mary WoIlstonecraft
was, no doubt, thoroughly in love with
Gilbert INLAY when she wrote this
passage; yet it requires no very great
lstretch of the imagination to form an
idea of the roars of laughter which
would be audible in a. court of Justice
when learned counsel read out the
4 paragraph about the delicious tear
trembling in the writer's eve. and.
which would be all Mr. Imlay's own
the tear or the eye?-if the Father of
Nature had not practically stepped in
land cried halves" Here is a sample
lof a love letter from a very exalted
parsonage indeed: How can / suff1-
GENTLY express to my sweetest, my
darling love, the delight which her
ldear, her pretty letter gave me. or
how much I feel all the kind things
she says to me in it? Millions and
millions of thanks for it. my angel
and be assured that my heart is fully
sensible of your affection, and that
upon it alone it's whole happiness de-
ponds. 1 am, however, quite hurt that
my love did not go to Lewes races /"
This is Frederick, Duke of York. at
the not very immature age Of 90. to
that certainly not romantic lady, Mrs.
Mary Ann Clarke. Hear James Hogg.
the Ettrick shepherd, to his afffanced
one: What is to be your bridal dress +?
know what I would choose, but do
not let that disarrange any of your
measures. 1 would have dressed you
in white muslin, with a white satin
j Highland hnnnet with mhita Mum &c