"Dear Unknown in the Pale Blue Dress,
"I am sending this to you as a child sends a walnut-shell boat sailing down a river. Where will it go to? Whom will it reach? I am leaving America to-day. By the time you read this—are you smiling with wondering eyes? or is your mouth grave, and your heart subdued?—I shall be throbbing away to Europe on board the Lusitania, and we shall probably never meet. But I am superstitious. As I drove down to the steamer just now the words that are often in my mind when I travel sprang with loud voices to my ear:
"'Dort wo du nicht bist, dort ist dein Glück.'
"Do you know German?
"'There where thou art not, is thy happiness.'
"I am leaving America because I hate it, and have never been happy here; probably my happiness was meanwhile in Europe, or Asia, or Australia. But what, now that I am going to Europe, if my happiness were in America after all? What if I were driving away from it, taking ships and sailing from it, catching trains and leaving it behind? I stopped the cab, and got these flowers on chance.
"The steward has called a messenger, an impish boy with a crooked mouth. He stands here waiting.
"I look at him, and like to think that you will see him too. But you? How shall we find you, the flowers, and my heart, and the messenger-boy?
"I shall tell him to stop the first girl he meets who is dressed in light blue. That is you. And I reason that if you wear a light blue dress you must be young; and if you are young you are happy; and if you are happy you are kind; and if you are kind you will write to me, who am a lonely, crabbed, and crusty man.