The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-05-31
How to Write Love Letters

Beatrice Fairfax in the New York Jour
 nal.
 Nothing can be made more beautiful. nothing can be made more foolish than love letter
 Judging from those we see printed as part of the pathetic stories told in the divorce courts, men and women who have mastered the art of writing tender missives live happily ever after At any rate, court records seldom disclose the great possibilities of the love letter.
 And it is not strange that this is so. for few novelists can escape being maud lins when they put pens into the hands of their heroes and heroines
 If novelists fail In expressing sentiment without sentimentality how much more likely to fail Is the young man who tries to tell the girl he loves of his passion, or the young woman who endeavors to putt on paper the new and wonderful beauty that has dwned in her life.
 And yet 1t is not at all necessary in writing a love letter to run the risk Of being held up to ridicule in case some unforeseen accident brings the missive under eyes for which it was never meant The youth who feels that he must speak and who lacks the courage to go 10 girl and tell her his sentiments, can, if he knows how, find many ways of expressing himself with dignity, and yet with that tenderness which alone will find a response in the feminine heart.
 He can, without committing himself to any words of his own, borrow from the poets whose works are full of noole and lofty sentiments--thoughts which express every phase of feeling down the whole gamut-lines which bring the tear of sympathy to the eye, the warm glow of understanding to the cheek, and the re- snonsive leap to the pulse.
 The language is vast and beautituL ard contains many words of cndearment which not only are ridiculous, but are in- stiEct with sweetness and beauty. They have found their way into our vocabula- " through the same channel Dy wnlch the letter writer would now send them the channel in which ebbs and flows the tide of love.
 To call a sensible girl a "duckling," 'kltten." or "dimpled darling is neith- CT true nor beautiful. Yet if you think that Is the only way to address the one you adore, read these passages from the love letter in Ships That Pass in the Nigh" one of the most beautiful in American literature:
 aYou little one, you dear little one,
 
 loved any one, ever drawn near to any ! one. have lived lonely all my young life. for I am only young man yet And then I thought that because l was cut Of from the pleasures that go to make a lovely thing of life 1t did not follow that l might not love you in my own quiet way, hugging my secret to myself until the love became all the yrsat.- because 1t was my secret. reasoned about It, too. It could not harr. -,cn that I loved you. No one sorld be the worse for being loved So little by little, yielded myself to tnis luxnry: and my heart. once so dried up' he~an 10 flower again; yes, little one, you win smile when I tell you that my heart broke into flower.
 If that. had been real ietter ana ,',a nag been brought to public notice, who could have smiled or made fun of 1t?
 Who could have found in 1t anything but an expression of the true beauty oi a great love, the voice ot lonely soul