It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don’t think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at).

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) American writer, poet, critic, editor

Letter to Professor E.S. Morse (c. 1889)
    (Source)