Another very cool item at my parents' home

My parents' house is full of old stuff, and lots of treasures.  Some of the items I have never seen.  This is one of those things:

This is an old box with personal letters from the late 1800's.  It belonged to one of my dad's relatives.  I don't know the story of how it got in the hands of my dad, but I started reading some of the correspondence and am looking forward to getting back to it.  The box, itself, was interesting to see how it locked - we had trouble figuring it out.