Dear sir

18.20 Duphot Paris 15 August

I found yesterday on my return to Paris your magnificent volume and

best thanks

Need I add that I will read it with

the greatest interest.

I beg to remain, dear is,

you on fait fr
Kadaillay

Hartford, Apl. 1/85.

Dear Madam:

Of cour

course Inc.

ж

spond, & with the great. est pleasure. When Baltimore acks anything

of me, my
5 say yes, before my

heart is ready
is

ready

head

has had a chance to inquire what it is,

I am but this moment

returned from a 3-days. absence, but I hope tam still in time Vern

झू

Clemery!

Letters of Congratulation and Condolence. To write a graceful letter of congratulation or a comforting letter of condolence requires both kindly instinct and tact, and the writer must have a delicate and sensitive appreciation of the finer feelings of life. Such letters should not be studied in their composition, but sympathetically spontaneous, and spring from a heart which is glad at a friend's success, or sincerely solicitous of his sorrows and afflictions. Engagements, marriages, births, and deaths are always events of importance in the families of our friends, and it is very remiss in us not to show our interest in them. The kind and encouraging expression of our friends' approval and felicitations upon any happy event in our lives augments and sweetens our own gratification, and their sympathy when we are in sorrow and distress comforts us and revives our hope. Unless one feels, however, that his letter will add to the happiness of the recipient, or be helpful to him in grief, it should not be written, otherwise it comes as an unwelcome intrusion instead of a messenger of

joy or peace.

The following letters are introduced for the purpose of showing how some masters of literature have expressed themselves in letters of congratulation and condolence. Such letters cannot be manufactured. They can be written only when one is glowing with the vivacious spirit, or imbued with the tender and

sympathetic mood. They are produced like the improvisations of an organist. One cannot read these masterpieces without having his sensibilities quickened and all his higher emotions gently stirred. Such letters are an unfailing source of inspiration.

CONGRATULATION ON ANNOUNCEMENT OF ENGAGEMENT George Bancroft to Charles Sumner

MY DEAR SUMNER:

NEWPORT, Sept. 15, 1886.

Though you may think I come tardily, like the lame son of the Israelitish king, yet you must receive with a true welcome my heart-felt congratulations on the impending change which is to make of the rest of your life a romance of untold happiness. Love in very young folks is so natural that it is no more observable than the blending of two drops of dew into one, or the mixing of two tears, or the junction of two tiny brooks, or anything else that may be charming but is commonplace and not noteworthy; but when a man of mature years, of high endowments, of the most varied culture, a robust nature, hardened by conflicts, treading the paths of ambition with energy and daring, is touched by the tender passion, love gains majesty as well as gentleness. To feel the passion of love in its full force, the subject of it needs to have the ripened experience of an active and unblemished character, the strength of a powerful, complete, and undecaying manhood.

To the lady in whom your affections have found a home I had the pleasure of being presented a few years ago; but I do not know her well enough to justify my writing to her directly; so I must claim of you to be the bearer of my regard, and to charge her to include me henceforward among her friends, having so many

years been included among yours. I hope your marriage will prove not only fraught with blessings for you and for her, but an omen of peace to the country, in whose history you have gained yourself so lasting a name. Mrs. Bancroft joins in all I have written, and more. I am ever, dear Sumner, most faithfully yours, GEORGE BANCROFT.

ANNOUNCING THE BIRTH OF A CHILD

Oliver Wendell Holmes to Mrs. Charles W. Upham

MY DEAR ANN:

March 9, 1841.

Last evening, between eight and nine, there appeared at No. 8 Montgomery Place a little individual who may hereafter be addressed as

but for the present is content with scratching his face

and sucking his right forefinger.

LETTERS OF CONDOLENCE

William Cowper to Joseph Hill, Esq.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

To condole with you on the death of a mother aged eighty-seven would be absurd; rather, therefore, as is reasonable, I congratulate you on the almost singular felicity of having enjoyed the company of so amiable and so near a relation so long. Your lot and mine in this respect have been very different, as, indeed, in almost every other. Your mother lived to see you rise, at least to see you comfortably established in the world;