While spending time indoors this February, many of us might be reminiscing about romantic gestures of years past or dreaming up new love letters to send to our significant others (or long-lost crushes). Here in the nytbriefing, we’re already feeling at least marginally reckless, so please indulge us as we begin: Dear Readers, we love you.
You may already know that the New York Public Library has digitized over 1.5 million romantic and platonic missives in its collection of correspondences. The project, called the New-York Historical Society Letterpress Archive, contains notes and lists made by librarians and archivists organizing vast vaults of unorganized papers — and, later, treasured love letters from the United States’s past, including 400 from James A. Garfield, just before he embarked as the 20th president, to his future wife. Here, a selection of missives transcribed by librarians and archivists, and chosen by Justin Moyer, of The Washington Post, as some of the best examples:
Just be around, you’re my only friend.
I don’t think I’m going to be your sweetheart but he does.
Good morning, sweetheart. Being in your arms again gave me certain cravings.
Time is a great innovator.
What good comments other than “I love you” can you make on a Valentine you’ve just received?
Darling, sometimes when you’ve got to go away you’ve simply got to go, but I wanted to tell you now how very much I love you and how deeply I’m thinking of you.
First kiss: “My darling Mehlina — the gushing springtime of love!” Your letter was full of sympathetic sentiments for the brilliant, generous and warmly human writer it came from. I read it many times over and over again with a most intense pleasure and it made me love you more than ever. To know that you sympathize with my feelings and that you understand and appreciate my devotion makes my heart full to overflowing and I kiss your dear letter and hold it longingly in both my arms. And I specially wanted you to believe that I love you as soon as I have the courage to tell you so to your face. God bless you.
I keep thinking of you.
I’ve been so inexcusably long.
My Max — three lines from the heart of yours always — Come!
If you spell “love” wrong, just add an “e” and it’s correct.
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