DEAR HOWELLS,--We had so charming a visit at your house that I have about made up my mind to reside with you permanently. I am tired of writing. I would like to settle down in just such a comfortable home as yours, with a man who can work regularly four or five hours a day, thereby relieving one of all painful apprehensions in respect to clothes and pocket-money. I am easy to get along with. I have few unreasonable wants and never complain when they are constantly supplied. I think I could depend on you. Ever yours, T.B.A. P.S.--I should want to bring my two mothers, my two boys (I seem to have everything in twos), my wife, and her sister. THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH TO E.S. MORSE DEAR MR. MORSE: It was very pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (at which I guessed). There's a singular and perpetual charm in a letter of yours--it never grows old; it never loses its novelty. One can say to one's self every morning: "There's that letter of Morse's. I haven't read it yet. I think I'll take another shy at it to-day, and maybe I shall be able in the course of a few days to make out what he means by those _t_'s that look like _w_'s, and those _i_'s that haven't any eyebrows." Other letters are read, and thrown away, and forgotten; but yours are kept forever--unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime. Admiringly yours, T.B. ALDRICH. WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY TO JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY THE QUADRANGLE CLUB, CHICAGO, September 30, '99. Your generous praise makes me rather shamefaced: you ought to keep it for something that counts. At least other people ought: you would find a bright ringing word, and the proportion of things would be kept. As for me, I am doing my best to keep the proportion of things, in the midst of no-standards and a dreary dingy fog-expanse of darkened counsel. Bah! here I am whining in my third sentence, and the purpose of this note was not to whine, but to thank you for heart new-taken. I take the friendly words (for I need them cruelly) and forget the inadequate occasion of them. I am looking forward with almost feverish pleasure to the new year, when I shall be among friendships which time and absence and half-estrangements have only made to shine with a more inward light; and when, so accompanied, I can make shift to think and live a little. Do not wait till then to say Welcome. W.V.M. BRET HARTE TO HIS WIFE LAWRENCE, KANSAS, October 24, 1873. MY DEAR ANNA,--