There is, and long has been, a prevalent impression that the penning of postscripts is peculiarly characteristic of the feminine letter-writer. Cynics have even gone so far as to assert that no woman can indite an epistle without the addition of a 'P.S.,' and, in support of this grievous aspersion, have been wont to trot out the venerable 'chestnut' about the lady who accepted from her husband a bet that she would not send him a letter without the inevitable addendum--the result being that, after having composed the epistle and signed her name, she artlessly appended the observation, 'You see I _have_ written you a letter without a postscript,' capping it with 'Who has won the wager, you or I?' It might be argued, even if it could not be proved, that, putting aside mere business communications, and confining one's self to ordinary social correspondence, men are guilty of as many postscripts as women are. But even if the stereotyped charge against the ladies be really well-founded, what of it? Does it convey any tangible reproach? What harm is there in a 'P.S.,' or a 'P.P.S.'? It may be not only a defensible, but positively a praiseworthy, thing. Often it proceeds from nothing more condemnable than a genuine overflow of feeling--a stream of sentiment which, checked by the signature of the writer, bursts its bonds and reasserts its power in a final sentence or two. What could be more charming, for example, than the instances of this afforded in so many of the heroic Lady Russell's letters to her husband--as in that particularly pleasing one in which, after assuring him that all the household are well, and that as he is 'the most enduring husband in the world,' so she is 'the most grateful wife,' she adds her signature, and then recurs to the subject of her children--'Boy is asleep, girls singing abed'--telling of the proposed kindness of a neighbour towards them. Note, again, the superabundant playfulness of Cowper in one of his epistles to Lady Hesketh, where, after a few lines of personal description, he appears to conclude, but returns to the topic with a 'P.S.--That the view I give you of myself may be complete I add the following items: That I am in debt to nobody, and that I grow fat.' Sometimes there will be pathos in a postscript, as in the case of Beethoven's touching communication to his brothers Carl and Johann in the matter of his deafness. In the body of the letter he has been begging them not to think him hostile, morose, or misanthropical, and making clear to them how little they know of the secret cause of his apparent indifference. Then, on the outside of the packet, comes this last melancholy outpouring: 'Thus, then, I take leave of you, and with sadness too. The fond hope I brought with me here [to Heiligenstadt] of being to a certain degree cured, now utterly forsakes me. As autumn leaves fall and wither, so are my hopes blighted.'