"My dear Mr. Morse: It was very pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty. One can say to one's self every morning: "There's that letter of Morse's. I haven't read it yet. I think I'll take another shy at it to-day, and maybe I shall be able in the course of a few years to make out what he means by those t's that look like w's and those i's that haven't any eyebrows." Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever—unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime."
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Novelists from the United StatesPoets from the United StatesEditors from the United States19th-century poets from the United StatesPoets from New Hampshire
Original Language: English
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The letter is introduced thus: "The Boston correspondent of The Book Buyer quotes an amusing letter sent by Mr. Aldrich to Professor E. S. Morse, ex-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor Morse, it should be said, has a handwriting quite indescribable in illegibility."
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Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (November 11, 1836 – March 19, 1907) was a poet and novelist born in Portsmouth, USA.
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