Letters with Love

Tiny tales of life, love, death, and much more.

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”

My dear Cassandra,—This morning has been spent in doubt and deliberation, in forming plans and removing difficulties, for it ushered in the day with an event which I had not intended should take place so soon by a week. Frank has received his appointment on board the "Captain John Gore," commanded by the "Triton," and will therefore be obliged to be in town on Wednesday; and though I have every disposition in the world to accompany him on that day, I cannot go on the uncertainty of the Pearsons being at home, as I should not have a place to go to in case they were from home.

Amherst, Jan. 12, 1846.
A., MY DEAR, — Since I received your precious
letter another year has commenced its course, and
the old year has gone never to return. How sad
it makes one feel to sit down quietly and think of
the flight of the old year, and the unceremonious
obtrusion of the new year upon our notice ! How
many things we have omitted to do which might
have cheered a human heart, or whispered hope
in the ear of the sorrowful, and how many things
have we done over which the dark mantle of regret
will ever fall !

It is not easy to escape from a big city. An entire continent was waiting to be traversed, and, for that reason, we lingered in New York till the city felt so homelike that it seemed wrong to leave it. And further, the more one studied it, the more grotesquely bad it grew—bad in its paving, bad in its streets, bad in its street-police, and but for the kindness of the tides would be worse than bad in its sanitary arrangements. No one as yet has approached the management of New York in a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance.

“What you must not do now is to worry and think of the Nationals that is now of the past. What you HABITUALLY THINK largely determines what you will become. Remember, success is a journey, not a destination. I have faith in your ability. You will do just fine.”

My Dear Madam,
I am very much obliged to you for your beautiful lines on the death of Nell, which I have read with great interest and pleasure.
Believe me
Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS.

Letter 7. TO J.S. HENSLOW.

Lima, July 12th, 1835.

This is the last letter which I shall ever write to you from the shores of America, and for this reason I send it. In a few days time the Beagle will sail for the Galapagos Islands. I look forward with joy and interest to this, both as being somewhat nearer to England and for the sake of having a good look at an active volcano. Although we have seen lava in abundance, I have never yet beheld the crater.

“The most important thing about dreams is the existence in them of magical emotions, to which waking consciousness is not ordinarily sentient. Awe of vast constructions; familiar eternal halls of buildings; sexual intensity in rapport; deathly music; grief awakenings, perfected lodgings.”

“For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more--remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.”