''What a strange feeling it is - and we have doubtless all experienced it - that of turning over old letters of the days of our youth! a whole life seems to come up with them, with all its hopes and sorrows.
Ηοw many persons with whom we were intimate in those days, are as it were dead to us! and yet they are alive, but for a long time we have not thought of them - of them whom we then thought to hold fast for ages, and with whom we were to share sorrow and joy.''
Hans Christian Andersen ' The Dumb Book'