From W. W. Story
My Dear Julia,
(I suppose I may still call you so — we are both so young and inexperienced) I cannot let this anniversary of your birth go by, without stretching out my hands to you across the ocean, and throwing to you all they can hold of good wishes, and affectionate thought, and delightful memories.
Though years have gone by since I have seen you, you are still fresh, joyous, and amusing, and charming as ever.
Of this I am fully persuaded, and often I look into that anxious mirror of my mind, and see you and wander with you, and jest with you and sing with you, as I used in the olden days; and never will I be so faithless as to believe that you are any older than you were — and I hope earnestly you are no wiser and that a great deal of folly is still left in you — as it is, I am happy to say, in me.
For, after all, what is life worth when its folly is all departed?
When we have grown wise and sad as well as old — it is time to say Good-bye.
But that time has not come for us yet. So let us still shout Evviva!
I do not mention the fact of your age,--I don't know it,--but if I should guess, from what I know I should say twenty-five.
I was twenty-eight when I left America-and that is such a few months ago -and I know you were born somewhat about the same time.
You will receive a great many congratulations and 