My unknown friend evidently kept track of my expanding efforts , for he commented and criticized , encouraged and advised freely . There was a humour in his letters that I liked ; it leavened them with its sanity and reacted on me most wholesomely , counteracting many of the morbid tendencies and influences of my life . I found myself striving to live up to the writer 's ideal of philosophy and ambition , as pictured , often unconsciously , in his letters . They were an intellectual stimulant as well . To understand them fully I found it necessary to acquaint myself thoroughly with the literature and art , the science and the politics they touched upon . After every letter there was something new for me to hunt out and learn and assimilate , until my old narrow mental attitude had so broadened and deepened , sweeping out into circles of thought I had never known or imagined , that I hardly knew myself . They had been coming for a year before I began to reply to them . I had often wished to do so -- there were so many things I wanted to say and discuss , but it seemed foolish to write letters that could not be sent . One day a letter came that kindled my imagination and stirred my heart and soul so deeply that they insistently demanded answering expression . I sat down at my desk and wrote a full reply to it . Safe in the belief that the mysterious friend to whom it was written would never see it , I wrote with a perfect freedom and a total lack of self-consciousness that I could never have attained otherwise . The writing of that letter gave me a pleasure second only to that which the reading of his brought . For the first time I discovered the delight of revealing my thought unhindered by the conventions . Also , I understood better why the writer of those letters had written them . Doubtless he had enjoyed doing so and was not impelled thereto simply by a purely philanthropic wish to help me . When my letter was finished I sealed it up and locked it away in my desk with a smile at my middle-aged folly . What , I wondered , would all my sedate , serious friends , my associates of mission and hospital committees think if they knew . Well , everybody has , or should have , a pet nonsense in her life . I did not think mine was any sillier than some others I knew , and to myself I admitted that it was very sweet . I knew if those letters ceased to come all savour would go out of my life .
XXXXX that I wrote a reply to every letter I received and kept them all locked up together .
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