“Oh, I think not; but you can see for yourself. He gave them to me to keep, because he is always going about. He always keeps my last till I write again, and then returns it for me to keep—I mean he always did do so—but he will never write me again,” she said, struggling with her emotion, as she gave Clara one of her letters to Dan. Clara read with quiet interest, forgetting all thought of the orthography in the simple eloquence expressed in every sentence. Tears came into her eyes as she read the closing paragraphs, “but I must not sit up later though I could never wish to stop. It is so sweet to know where you are and to send you words of love and then so much more sweet to know that you care for them. I must be up early to help your mother who is so kind to me. I keep thinking all the day that sometime she may come to like me and be willing that I should be your wife though I know I am not worthy of so high an honor. Your family would be ashamed of mine, Dan. This is a hard thought, but it is not my fault, and I mean to be good and true always. I read all the time I can get, and try to improve all I can. Do not laugh at my spelling, dearest. Remember I never went to school steadily but two months in my life. When we are together you will teach me, and I shall show you how seriously I can study. Good-night, dearest one. I kiss you in my thoughts and all my love and all my life are yours forever.” “Oh, how blind your love has made you, Susie. Why, this letter is eloquent. If my brother had been capable of understanding your generous sensibility, he would rather have sought to learn of you, than to have presumed to be your teacher. There are errors in orthography, but not half so many as there are in his; besides the sentiment of yours is noble, and that of his is not. You spell beautiful with two ll’s, and there are one or two other errors; but I believe they are all from studying Dan’s ridiculous style. You write a pretty hand, and your head, as papa says, is an excellent one. There is nothing to hinder your getting a fair education. I will teach you the Latin and Greek words from which ours are made up, also rhetoric, and history, and geography, and we will study botany together. You will be charmed with botany. I have all the text-books, and I want you to commence even to-morrow, so that you can have no time to brood over your miseries. I know you won’t do as silly girls do who, when persecuted for falling one step, think they may as well go quite down to perdition. Remember, you are not really degraded in my eyes, and I want you to take me into your heart as a true friend.”