Dear Ros

I loved my day in Maryland so much --It made me happy for one whole week --It is only Thursday today--But I know the spell will carry over until tomorrow.

The author of the letter was Jackie Kennedy. Her escort in the Maryland countryside was the dashing Roswell Gilpatric, at the time Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy Administration. On the day of their excursion, June 7, 1963, John Kennedy was 3,000 miles away in California watching a demonstration of naval weaponry. The next day he would leave for Honolulu, all part of a five-day presidential trip.

Gilpatric figured that the letter, dated June 13 and one of several written to him by Jackie, was safely stashed in a locked cabinet at the Manhattan law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he is now senior partner. But last week this letter and three others to him from Jackie turned up in the Manhattan shop of Autograph Auctioneer Charles Hamilton. They were brought there by Theodore Donson, 32, a lawyer who was formerly employed by Gilpatric's firm.

Hamilton had auctioned Jackie's mail before (one letter went for $3,000 in 1964) and planned to put the latest on the block in March. As he routinely does whenever he receives Kennedy memorabilia, Hamilton sent copies of the letters to Washington Post Columnist Maxine Cheshire. She, in turn, called Gilpatric, who immediately checked his file cabinet. "They have obviously been purloined by someone with larceny in their heart," he said.

All You Were. The letters were written between 1963 and 1968, the year Gilpatric was separated from his third wife, Madelin. In the last of the four that were to be auctioned, Jackie explained to Ros, with whom she had traveled to the Yucatan Peninsula several months before, why she had not let him in on her plans to marry Ari. "Dearest Ros --I would have told you before I left --but then everything happened so much more quickly than I'd planned." She closed the letter, written during her honeymoon, saying, "I hope you know all you were and are and will ever be to me --With my love, Jackie."

The "Dear Ros" letters were impounded by the district attorney's office, which was questioning Donson about how they came into his possession. According to Donson, the letters were passed along to him by a night stenographer at Gilpatric's law office. The man had said that he knew Donson was a collector of art prints and that he had found the letters in a wastebasket. Donson took them to the auctioneer and received $500 in advance, but when he learned that they were stolen, he tried to get them back to return them to Gilpatric.

By week's end, the elusive night stenographer was still at large. Meanwhile, Jackie, looking no worse for the publicity, was ice-skating merrily at Rockefeller Center with young John Kennedy.

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