Tender secrets are concealed in the weather-worn bag of the postman. The
lovers may hide their hearts from all but him. Parents, guardians, and
even mature maiden aunts may be successfully diverted, but not the
postman!

He knows that the girl who eagerly watches for him in the morning has
more than a passing interest in the mail. He knows where her lover is,
how often he writes, when she should have a letter, and whether all is
well.

Sometimes, too, he knows that it is better to take a single letter to
the house three or four times in succession, rather than to leave it in
the hands of one to whom it is not addressed.

Blessed be the countless Cupids in the uniform of the postal service!
The little blind god is wont to assume strange forms, apparently at
will. But no stern parent could suspect that his sightless eyes were
concealed behind the spectacles of a sedate postman, nor that his wicked
arrows were hidden under piles of letters.

The uninitiated wonder "what there is to write about." A man may have
seen a girl the evening before, and yet a bulky letter comes in the
afternoon. And what mysterious interest can make one write three or four
times a week?

Where is the girl whose love letter was left in pawn because she could
not find her purse? The grizzled veteran never collects the "two cents
due" on the love letters that are a little overweight. He would not put
a value upon anything so precious, and he is seldom a cynic--perhaps
because, more than anyone else, he is the dispenser of daily joy.

The reading of old love letters is in some way associated with
hair-cloth trunks, mysterious attics, and rainy days. The writers may be
unknown and the hands that laid them away long since returned to dust,
but the interest still remains.

[Sidenote: Dead Roses]

Dead roses crumble to ashes in the gentle fingers that open the long
folded pages--the violets of a forgotten spring impart a delicate
fragrance to the yellowed spot on which they lay. The ink is faded and
the letter much worn, as though it had lain next to some youthful
breast, to be read in silence and solitude until the tender words were
graven upon the heart in the exquisite script of Memory.

The phrasing has a peculiar quaintness, old fashioned, perhaps, but with
a grace and dignity all its own. Through the formal, stately sentences
the hidden sweetness creeps like the crimson vine upon the autumn
leaves. Brave hearts they had, those lovers of t