Morning Appeal

A Mine of Poetry and Passion
Found in the Capitol Building.

For some weeks past a number of house cleaners have been at work on the Capitol building renovating it from top to bottom.

In the vault under the Secretary of State's office they unearthed an old box containing about two hundred love letters.

They were in various handwritings, and some were tied in bundles by blue ribbon and some contained locks of hair. Some of these locks were of the 'glorious golden,' hue and some black as night and some of a chestnut variety.

The letters gave no evidence of the receiver's or sender's identity. They were signed only by the given names of the writers and addressed to 'My Dearest,' etc. They were written on paper of various sizes and styles and the stratifications of correspondence represented fairly well the changing fashions of stationery from 1860 to the later period of Nevada's statehood.

Talk about love letters of an English woman, here were a number of American ladies who could make this English woman have a tired feeling when it came to pouring forth on paper the volcanic passion that burned within their souls. All these letters were of a high order of literary merit and written in delicate and faultless handwriting.

As the house cleaners lifted the mouldy missives of almost forgotten past and turned them over wonderingly, the faint scent of violets and jasmines floated up from the delicate epistles a fragrant reminder that the sweet memory of a number of unrequited buried affections that flourished greenly in the days when Nye was first elected Senator of Nevada and the wives and mothers of today were cutting their first growth of teeth.

As they seemed to belong to nobody in particular and with the general idea that writers and recipients were dead, the letters were passed about and perused, and many were the exclamations of wonderment at the refinement and education of the writers, and the opinion was generally expressed that the man who could have inspired so much of the tender passion and from such a varied collection of individuals all at once, must have been a veritable Aaron Burr in personal magnetism.

Certainly he was no ordinary individual, on whom so many of the fair sex should concentrate their lavishly applied affections. And to think that the sly dog must have been corresponding with half a dozen at once, if the dates counted for anything.

Secretary of State Howell, who is somewhat of a sentimental turn himself, wanted to annex the letters to the State library, but finally determined to ascertain, if possible, who owned the chest of concentrated sentiment in the basement of his office, and after some search brushed the dirt off the side of the chest and there deciphered the initials T. W. H.

It really looked as if it was no other than Thaddeus Warsaw Healey who owned the contraband goods of Cupid and he was accordingly notified that the letters were there and that he could have them on application.

Up to the present writing the Judge has not responded and possibly it may be some one else. Suspicion however points strongly to this gay old bachelor, who at the time, was cutting a wide swath among feminine hearts in Carson and was the veritable Beau Brummel of the period.