My acquaintance with the army was always pleasant, and like Tom Moore I often say: Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy Bright dreams of the past which she cannot destroy! Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care And bring back the features that joy used to wear.

Long, long be my heart with such memories filled! I suppose the Colonel goes down to the Ship Chandler's and gams with the old whaling captains.

When I was a boy, there was a wealthy family of ship-owners in New Bedford by the name of Robinson.

I saw one of their ships in Bombay, India, that was in 1854, her name was the Mary Robinson, and altho' there were over a hundred ships on the bay, she was the handsomest there.
Well, good friend, I am afraid I will tire you out, so I will belay this, and with best wishes for you and yours, I am, yours truly, J.A.MELLON.
P.S .-- Fisher is long since called to his Long Home.
***** I had fancied, when Vanished Arizona was published, that it might possibly appeal to the sympathies of women, and that men would lay it aside as a sort-of a "woman's book"-- but I have received more really sympathetic letters from men than I have from women, all telling me, in different words, that the human side of the story had appealed to them, and I suppose this comes from the fact that originally I wrote it for my children, and felt perfect freedom to put my whole self into it.

And now that the book is entirely out of my hands, I am glad that I wrote it as I did, for if I had stopped to think that my dream people might be real people, and that the real people would read it, I might never have had the courage to write it at all.
The many letters I have received of which there have been several hundred I am sure, have been so interesting that I reproduce a few more of them here: FORT BENJAMIN HARRISON, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA.