LETTERS THAT MAKE YOU THINKAbraham Lincoln Refuses to Lend His Stepbrother Eighty Dollars 2
Emily Dickinson Finds Ecstasy in the Mere Sense of Living 7
Mark Twain Refuses to Sanction a Dramatization of Tom Sawyer 11
Lord Chesterfield Lays down Some Precepts for His Natural Son 15
Henri Poincare and Marie Curie Recommend Albert Einstein for a Professorship at Zurich Institute 19
LETTERS ABOUT LOVE AND CAREWilliam James Discovers that He has Omitted the Deepest Principle of Human Nature from His Textbook on Psychology 27
Pierre Curie Asks Marie Sklodovska,a Former Govemess and a Student of Physics,to Be His Wife 31
Sarah Bernhardt Tells Victorien Sardou Why Paris Is a Vast Desert of Desolation without Him 35
Napoleon Learns from Josephine that She has Recovered Her Heart 39
Benjamin Disraeli Offers to Free Thomas Carlyle from Common Cares in the Sunset of His Life 43
LETTERS ABOUT SADNESSBenjamin Franklin Consoles a Relative on the Death of His Brother 51
Ludwig van Beethoven Prepares to Meet His Fate 57
Dostoevsky Describes His Sensations when He Had but One Minute to Live 64
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Receives an Involuntary Confession from His Benefactress 69
Charles Dickens Tells His Wife that Their Infant Daughter has Died 75
LETTERS THAT MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORLD BETTERBenjamin Franklin Hurls His Defiance at an Old Comrade 83
Blaise Pascal Asks a Colleague to Confirm a Scientific Prediction 87
Lenin Warns the Communist Party that Stalin Is Concentrating Too Much Power in His Own Hands 91
Du Barry Makes a Business Proposition to an Admirer 97
Christopher Columbus Reports His First Impressions of America 101