Excerpt from Letters, Vol. 1 of 2 Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity. It is an urge, of course, like every other form of activity. People write letters because they can't help writing them. But it is an urge which indicates a generous spirit. Horace Wal pole and Mme. De Sevigne had little else to occupy their abundant leisure. Letters were to them a form of liter ary composition. Sir Walter Scott never had any leisure, and Walter Page died of overwork. Letters were to them a means of communication with friends. No one of the four ever stayed his or her hand because there were other things to do. Louise Imogen Guiney worked hard and loved idle ness - idleness to read, idleness to roam the country side; yet so great was the prodigality of her pen that time and fatigue seem equally out of the reckoning. Even her school letters are full, free, joyous, written as though she loved to write them. Even the familiar commonplaces of season and of weather find space in her pages, and present themselves with an animating air of novelty: Spring is galloping this way, as you would believe if you could see the fat beetles reeling from under the dead leaves in the woods. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.