Here is one--from a never-seen friend--which has been lying for months in THE CONTINENTAL his drawer. Shall we be pardoned for publishing it? We hope so, for we remember that it pleased us well when we received it, and what is good for the editor must be good for the reader. Let it go! _The Hermitage, May_, 1862. DEAR FRIEND: Appearances--to make a very original remark--are deceitful. To the traveler who may chance to cast his eyes upon this little brown, house, a little brown house it will be to him, 'and nothing more.' He will not even notice the woodbines that are flinging their arms around the windows, nor will he dwell for an instant upon the thrifty cotton-woods that guard the door, or bestow more than a casual glance on the artistically arranged garden-beds, wherein I have anxiously watched tulips and radishes sprouting into existence. Anxiously--for winter has been writing a somewhat lengthy postscript to his annual message, and the modest, gentle-mannered spring retreats in lady-like fright before his furious blasts. Now we are having an interval of hazy warmth--the really royal weather of the year--red sunshine, the hills purple and blue in the distance, and the still air savory with the smoke of brush-burnings and the wild breath of new-lifed vegetation. Lovelier than the Indian summer, for mingled with all things is the consciousness of the flowering and fruiting _to come_. The Indian summer has a sweet sadness. The spring is full of hope and promise, and the _heart_ buds with the flowers. Out in the midst of all this country springtime freshness, our 'Hermitage' looks up from its shrubberies and rejoices within itself, and does not care for the traveler's careless glances. The traveler may call it stupid and ugly, if he calls it at all; our Hermitage still patiently wears its havelock of weather-beaten shingles, for _it_ knows that beneath its lowly roof--radiant with whitewash and fresh paper--are cozy, coolly curtained rooms, where friendly books look down from the wall, and drowsy arm-chairs woo from the corners. Yes, many Wisconsin banks have yielded up their lives in the past year, and in one of these fatal safes our little pile of 'ready' irrevocably evaporated! Ah! the palmy days! when we had rooms at the ----; when our tables were marble-topped and our mirrors presented full-length portraits of us; when every dinner was a feast for epicures; when servants awaited our nod or beck; when Davis's best turn-out bowled us away to the purple bluffs yonder, at every sunset, and bowled us back again happy in pocket and in heart! Those days have gemmed themselves in the past.