“I have brought you a few letters from some of my extraordinary correspondents, Aunt Esther.”

“We will compare notes, my dear,” said mamma, looking up from a rose-colored sheet embellished with decidedly scrawly writing.  “I have just received one that is quite astounding.”

“From Tennessee,” said Ida, looking at the postmark.  “I know the writing; that man has sent me as many as half a dozen letters, wishing to enter into correspondence.  I suppose that finding me so unresponsive he thinks he will try another member of the family.”

“He comes to the point in a most emphatic manner this time,” said mamma, “by asking me for your hand; and as the letter is really a curiosity in a literary point of view, I will read it to you.” [1]

“NASHVILLE, TENN.

“MRS. JOHN F. CLEVELAND:—­I reckon I am one of the spoilt children of the South, similar to what Mr. Greeley says of South Carolina.  I want to Marry Miss Ida, because she is the daughter of the most powerful Man that has yet appeared on the American Continent.  Mr. Greeley turned four millions of slaves loose with the Pen can’t I win his daughter with the same facile weapon?  Now Mrs. Cleveland won’t you help me?  I am not a Humbug, I have too many bullet holes through my body to be classed with that tribe of insects.  I begin to feel a little skittish about my age, 35 and not yet Married.  Yet I have always been rather a fatalist and incline to Worship some star.  The Greeks Worshiped the sun, And moon under the Name of Isis and Osiris, but I am more like the Arab look to the stars for something sublime and unchanging among all the bright lights that hang and move in the firmament.  The North Star Appears to be the most important.  The Axis on which our Earth daily turns.  The point from which all Mariners calculate their course in mid ocean, and safely guides Them from continent to continent.  Without the North Star there would be no Magnetic Meridian by which Governments could be surveyed and divided equitably to its inhabitants and civilization would lose its strong hold in being based on Justice.  If there is any South Star that plays such an important part on this continent or Europe I have never heard of it.  Miss Ida is the North Star made so by the fact her father was the great center around Which The whole country swung.  And As she is the oldest the crown of greatness ought to rest on her head.  And if she will Marry Me I will do as hard fighting as Caesar did to put it there.  With great respects yours Truly

“------ ------.”

This letter would have excited more astonishment than it did, had it not been only a fair specimen of what Ida has been daily receiving since her father’s death.  She then read us one from Indiana, addressed to herself, and written, as the newspapers would say, with a view to matrimony, but couched in quite a business-like strain: 

“MISS IDA GREELEY: