"I know that I have lost a good soldier," he went on, "and feel just as if I had lost a good friend. Every time I would see your son performing some duty I would ... advance him for the willing and satisfactory manner in which he performed it. It's a cruel shame and I'm mighty sorry." The letter was signed "Charles J. Bellamy." He was a captain at Camp Devens, Mass.

Something about the letter unnerved me. How could something so intensely personal as a letter about the death of a son find its way into e-commerce? I was troubled too by the utter anonymity of this soldier's death. The deceased was not even named, though his identity was clear enough to the father in whose trembling hands this letter was once held. But that grief had long since been reduced to a mere archival curiosity. Less -- a commodity on a Web site.

It seemed to me that a life, no matter how brief, ought to come to more than this. Who was the young man? What battle claimed him? Where was he buried? Did he leave behind a wife or children? Over the intervening 80 years all traces of his life had been expunged. He had now been consigned to the lowest rung of history, too obscure even to catch a legitimate antiquarian's eye. The last remaining evidence of this young man's tragedy was now the subject of a bidding war in cyberspace, to which I reluctantly added my own offer. The bidding began at a few dollars. Within days, the price had soared.

I became determined to win, though I had not the foggiest idea why. And in the end I did win. I scribbled off a check for $67.50 and waited for my prize.

The yellowing letter arrived a few days later by priority mail. It was still in the envelope from which a stricken father had sought comfort after his son's death. I read it almost with a sense of shame, and tucked it away in a drawer where it remained for months, a strange trophy for which I had no discernible use and that made me feel like a ghoulish interloper. What had made me purchase another's grief at auction?

I had all but forgotten about the letter until one day I came across it again and sat down to read it once more. I felt an irrepressible need to learn something about this young man, to know at least his name and the field in which he fell. As an investigative reporter, I fancied myself well equipped for the task. I telephoned Manchester, Vt., and spoke to the town clerk. I interviewed the caretakers of cemeteries. I queried a local historian. Everywhere I drew a blank.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"