...the only pleasure I now see is in perusing your very precious letters. . . .

The title of this post is excerpted from a letter written by Confederate Lieutenant William Steele to his sweetheart, Annie McFarland, in December 1864.

I found the letter on the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum's Web site. The Web site is quite fascinating and has information about the museum's permanent exhibits in Washington D.C., as well as about online exhibits on topics such as "The Art of the Stamp" and the devoted mail clerks aboard the Titanic.

The "War Letters: Lost and Found" online exhibit features letters that were lost or discarded by the original recipients. According to the Web site, the letters were found by strangers, recovered from the trash, yard sales, construction sites or former homes and were forwarded to the Legacy Project. The exhibit, which was originally on view at the museum from 2005 to 2006, copies of letters from the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

If you're interested in letter writing, stamp collecting or U.S. history, the National Postal Museum Web site is worth visiting, as, I'm sure, is the museum itself.