"If that Lady likes to pass her Days with him, he in turn would like to pass his Nights with her; & he has already given her many of his days, though he has so few left to give, she appears ungrateful never to have given him a single one of her nights...." ~Benjamin Franklin, American statesman, scientist and philosopher, to Madame Helvetius, September 19th, 1779.

"I have seen only you, I have admired only you, I desire only you." ~Napoleon Bonaparte, French ruler, to Madam Marie Walewska, January 1st, 1807.

Collect beautiful and meaningful stamps. I use the "Iowa" stamp when writing to my sister in Bloomfield; or an "angel" stamp when sending a special note to my daughter, Jennifer, the angel collector.

"Monsieur, the poor have not need of much to sustain them ~ they ask only for the crumbs that fall from the rich men's table. But if they are refused the crumbs they die of hunger. Nor do I, either, need much affection from those I love. I should not know what to do with a friendship entire and complete ~ I am not used to it. But you showed me of yore a little interest, when I was your pupil in Brussels, and I hold on to the maintenance of that little interest ~ I hold on to it as I would hold on to life."" ~Charlotte Bronte, English writer, to Professor Constantin Heger, January 8th, 1845. There is no evidence that this love was returned by Heger, who had employed her as a governess for his children in Belgium.

• "Dress" your letters carefully! A letter is actually a work of art.
  
  
• Write by hand, unless your writing is truely unreadable. (If such is the case and you must type your letter, at least sign in your own handwriting.) Remember, your handwriting says a lot about you!
  
  
• There are thousands of lovely writing papers on the market today, but nothing is as timeless as jet black ink upon thick, luxurious cream or white paper.

"Love demands everything, and rightly so. Thus is it for me with thee, for thee with me...Our love, is it not a true heavenly edifice, firm as heaven's vault?" ~Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer, to Countess Giuletta Guicciardi, July 6th, 1801.

"Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love & prayer for this priceless treasure that is confided to my life-long keeping. You cannot see its intangible waves as they flow toward you, darling, but in these lines you will hear, as it were, the distant beating of its surf." ~Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), American writer, to Olivia Langdon, his future wife, May 12th, 1869.

Save special letters and tie them together with ribbon. I have a bundle of letters, wrapped in wide blue satin ribbon, which my grandfather wrote to me over a period of many years before he died. When I need a good cry, or when I just want to feel his presence in my life again, I open them up and reread the loving words he penned to his firstborn grandchild.

"You have lifted my very soul up into the light of your soul, and I am not ever likely to mistake it for the common daylight." ~Elizabeth Barrett, English poet, to Robert Browning, her future husband and fellow-poet, August 17th, 1846.

While going through our mother's belongings shortly after her death, my sisters and I discovered an old, handwritten (in German) letter that our great-grandmother had written to our mother in 1933. Mother would have been less than a year old when she received that letter. My great-grandmother lived almost a hundred miles away from her first grandchild, and I imagine there had been, perhaps, other letters written over the years.

My great-grandparents were immigrants from Austria, and never did learn to speak English. Through the kindness of an internet friend whom I have never met (thank you, Ines Salazar!), it was translated for me and, sixty-five years later, I am able to read the words so lovingly penned by my Austrian grandmother to her firstborn grandaughter, my mother.

Here, then, is The Letter ~

Dear Bernadine,

My heart...little sugarbeet...sweet as honey...

I haven't heard from you in a long time, so I have to ask you, how do you like your tooth? Maybe you have several already?

How do you like the shoes that Papa bought you?

Grandpa wants to know whether your Dad has bought you some wine already. If not, you'll have to come to us and Grandpa will give you some so that you'll get strong teeth.

Ask your Mom when she'll come to Peru again. I want to see you and see how tall you've become.

Uncle Adi is too lazy to write so I have to do it.

I would have written earlier but there is no news. All banks are closed just like where you live.

How is Grandmother Gapsovich?

Say hi to everyone from us. Say hi to your Mom, Dad, and especially we're greeting you.

Love,
Grandpa, Grandma, and Uncle Adi

You can read into this letter one of the "old world" ideas of my great-grandmother ~ that drinking wine will make your teeth strong! Hmmmm.....

It is also interesting to note her comment, "...all the banks are closed just like where you live." I assume this is a reference to the financial crisis in the country at that time due to the Great Depression.

This beautiful letter ~ old, written on parchment paper in lovely script ~ shows us the vital "connection" that letters can serve in our lives. In my case, a letter connected me back to a great-grandmother who knew and loved me when I was a baby; it connected me to thoughts of my own mother as a baby, as a little girl; and it connected me back to a time in history when people in my country were struggling to survive, day in and day out.

Letters are powerful. Letters are educational. Letters are eternal.

"My Heart ~ We are thus far separated ~ but after all one mile is as bad as a thousand ~ which is a great consolation to one who must travel six hundred before he meets you again. If it will give you any satisfaction, I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes ~ and as cold as Charity ~ Chastity or any other Virtue." ~Lord Byron, English poet, to Annabella Milbanke, his future wife, November 16th, 1814.

"I want you for always ~ days, years, eternities." ~Robert Schumann, German composer, to Clara Wieck, German pianist and his future wife, April 15th, 1838.

~ Ten Reasons To Write A Letter ~

To Say ...

1. I'm sorry
2. I'm proud of you
3. I miss you
4. I appreciate you
5. I'm thinking about you
6. I support you
7. I'm praying for you
8. I need you
9. I forgive you
10. I love you

"Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder." ~Abraham Lincoln, future American president, describing his recent marriage to Mary Todd, in a letter to Samuel D. Marshall, a lawyer, November 11th, 1842. His marriage had taken place a week earlier.

"Thank you for my dear letter...for the love it bore me, and for its golden thoughts and feelings, so like gems..."
~ Emily Dickinson

"Darling wife, I have a number of requests to make to you: 1st.I beg you will not be melancholy. 2nd.That you will take care of yourself, and not expose yourself to the spring breezes. 3rd.That you will not go out to walk alone ~ indeed, it would be better not to walk at all. 4th.That you will feel entirely assured of my love. ~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, German composer, to Constanze, his wife, April 16th, 1789.

"No, my sweet darling, those three letters are not the last hand-clasp of the lover who is quitting you; they are the embrace of the brother who remains to you. This feeling is too beautiful, too pure and too sweet for me ever to want to have done with it." ~George Sand (Amantine Aurore Dudevant), French writer, to Alfred de Musset, French poet, May 12th, 1834.

"To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written."
~ Jean Jacques Rousseau

"My heart overflows with emotion and joy! I do not know what heavenly languor, what infinite pleasure permeates it and burns me up. It is as if I had never loved!!! Tell me whence these uncanny disturbances spring, these inexpressible foretastes of delight, these divine tremors of love. Oh! all this can only spring from you, sister, angel, woman, Marie! ... All this can only be, is surely nothing less than a gentle ray streaming from your fiery soul, or else some secret poignant teardrop which you have long since left in my breast." ~Franz Liszt, Hungarian piano virtuoso and composer, to Marie d'Agoult, 1834.

When writing to family or friends far away, turn your letters into small gifts. Enclose local news clippings of interest, a book review, a sample of your new wallpaper, or a photo of special meaning you've clipped from a magazine.

"I could not help feeling how unequal were the heart-riches we might offer each to each: I, for the first time, giving my all at once, and forever ..." ~Edgar Allan Poe, to Sarah Helen Whitman

~ Great Books About Letters ~

• Letters of C.S. Lewis, edited by W.H. Lewis. New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966.

• The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, edited by Mark Roskill. New York: Atheneum, 1984.

• The Collected Letters of D.H. Lawrence, edited by Harry T. Moore, New York: Viking, 1962.

• The Letters of Virginia Woolf, edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautman. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.

• Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman 1910-1959, edited by Robert H. Ferrell. New York: W.W. Norton, 1983.

• Jane Austen~Selected Letters, 1796-1817, edited by R.W. Chapman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

• The Treasury of the World's Great Letters: From Ancient Days to Our Own Time, edited by M. Lincoln Schuster. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940.

• Gift of a Letter, by Alexandra Stoddard. New York: Doubleday, 1990.

• Love Letters~An Anthology of Passion, conceived and compiled by Michelle Lovrie. New York: 1994.

• Love Letters from Cell 92 ~ The correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his fiancee Maria von Wedemeyer, 1943-45.

~ LINKS ~

United States Postal Service

Write Your Own Letter to the World

Civil War Love Letters

Other Famous Love Letters

How To Make A Feather Quill Pen

Pen World International Magazine

What The Size of Your Handwriting Reveals

The Personality of Penmanship

Rules For Good Cursive Handwriting

Annual American Handwriting Competition

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