Loo Loo's personal charms attracted attention wherever she made her appearance. At church, and other public places, people pointed her out to strangers, saying, "That is the wife of Mr. Alfred Noble. She was the orphan daughter of a rich planter at the South, and had a great inheritance left to her; but Mr. Noble lost it all in the financial crisis of 1837." Her real history remained a secret, locked within their own breasts. Of their three children, the youngest was named Loo Loo, and greatly resembled her beautiful mother. When she was six years old, her portrait was taken in a gypsy hat garlanded with red berries. She was dancing round a little white dog, and long streamers of ribbon were floating behind her. Her father had it framed in an arched environment of vine-work, and presented it to his wife on her thirtieth birth-day. Her eyes moistened as she gazed upon it; then kissing his hand, she looked up in the old way, and said, "I thank you, Sir, for buying me." LETTER-WRITING. A friend, who happens to have an idea or two of his own, is constantly advising his acquaintances in no case to become parties to a regular correspondence. He is a great letter-writer himself, but never answers an epistle, unless it contain queries as to matters of fact, or be an invitation to a ball or a dinner,--unless, in a word, real, not what he considers conventional politeness requires; in which event, his reply is despatched at once. Under all other circumstances, he ignores the last missive from him or her to whom his envelope is addressed. He studiously frames his own communications in such wise, that they do not call for an answer. He will totally neglect an intimate friend for months, then let fly at him epistle after epistle, and then give no sign of life for a long while again. If asked to exchange letters once a week or once a fortnight, he solemnly inquires whether the wind goes by machinery, and is, after a given interval, invariably at such o'clock,--adding, that it is his aim, not to keep up, but to keep down, correspondence. If accused of "owing a letter," he repudiates the obligation, and affirms that he will go to jail sooner than pay it off. If taxed with heartlessness, he retorts by asking whether it can be the duty of a moral being to insult a man by writing to him when there is nothing to say. That these notions, whether they did or did not originate in an unfortunate love-affair, which my friend is said to have gone through in his youth, contain grains of truth may be easily shown.