OLD LETTERS Never burn kindly written letters; it is so pleasant to read them over when the ink is born and paper yellow with age, and the hands that traced the friendly words are folded over the hearts that prompted them, under the green sod. Above all, never burn love letters. To read then in after years is like a resurrection to one's youth. the elder spinster finds, in the impassioned offer she foolishly rejected twenty years ago, a fountain of invenessence. Glancing over it, she realizes that she was once a belle and a beauty, and beholds her former self in a mirror much congenial to her tastes then the one that confronts her dressing-room. The "Widow indeed" derives a sweet and solemn consolation from the letters of the beloved on who had journeyed before her to the far-off land, from which there comes no message, and where she hopes one day to join him. No photographs can so vividly recall to the memory of the mother the tenderness and devotion of the children who have left at the call of Heaven, as the epistolary outpouring of their love. The letter of a true son or daughter to a true mother is something better than an image of the features-it is a reflex of the writer�s soul. Keep all loving letter; burn only the harsh ones and in burning them, forgive and forget. (Taken from the Elk Falls Journal, Howard Co., Ks. January 17, 1874)