however brief the letters may be they will take time— altogether the three will consume an hour. Have these correspondents any right to expect me to work an hour for them? Would a cabman drive them about the streets of London during an hour for nothing? Would a waterman pull them an hour on the Thames for nothing? Would a shoe-black brush their boots and trousers an hour for nothing? And why am I to serve these men gratuitously and be called an ill-bred discourteous person if I tacitly decline to be their servant? We owe sacrifices-occasional sacrifices-of this kind to friends and relations, and we can afford them to a few, but we are under no obligation to answer everybody. Those whom we do answer may be thankful for a word on a post-card in Gladstone's brief but sufficient fashion. I am very much of the opinion of Rudolphe in Ponsard's L'Honneur et l'Argent. A friend asks him what he does

about letters :

Rudolphe.

Je les mets

Soigneusement en poche et ne réponds jamais.
Premier Ami.

Oh! vous raillez.

Rudolphe. Non pas. Je ne puis pas admettre
Qu'un importun m'oblige à répondre à sa lettre,
Et, parcequ'il lui plaît de noircir du papier
Me condamne moi-même à ce fâcheux métier.

ESSAY XXIII.

LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP.

If the art of writing had been unknown till now, and if the invention of it were suddenly to burst upon the world as did that of the telephone, one of the things most generally said in praise of it would be this. It would be said "What a gain to friendship now that friends can communicate in spite of separation by the very widest distances!"

Yet we have possessed this means of communication, the fullest and best of all, from remote antiquity, and we scarcely make any use of it-certainly not any use at all responding to its capabilities, and as time goes on, instead of developing those capabilities by practice in the art of friendly correspondence, we allow them to diminish by disuse.

The lowering of cost for the transport of letters, instead of making friendly correspondents numerous, has made them few. The cheap postage-stamp has increased business correspondence prodigiously, but it has had a very different effect on that of friendship. Great numbers of men whose business correspondence is heavy scarcely write letters of friendship at all. Their minds. produce the business letter as by a second nature, and are otherwise sterile.

As for the facilities afforded by steam communication with distant countries, they seem to be of little use to friendship, since a moderate distance soon puts a stop to friendly communication. Except in cases of strong affection the Straits of Dover are an effectual though imaginary bar to intercourse of this kind, not to speak of the great oceans.

The impediment created by a narrow sea is, as I have said, imaginary, but we may speculate on the reasons for it, and my own reflections have ended in the somewhat strange conclusion that it must have something to do with sea-sickness.

It must be that people dislike the idea of writing a letter that will have to cross a narrow channel of salt-water, because they vaguely and dimly dread the motion of the vessel. Nobody would consciously avow to himself such a sympathy with a missive exempt from all human ills, but the feeling may be unconsciously present. How else are we to account for the remarkable fact that salt-water breaks friendly communication by letter? If you go to live anywhere out of your native island your most intimate friends cease to give any news of themselves. printed announcements of the their families. This does not friendly feeling on their part. If you appeared in England again they would welcome you with the utmost kindness and hospitality, but they do not like to post anything that will have to cross the sea. The newsvendors have not the same delicate imaginative sympathy with the possible sufferings of rag-pulp, so you get your English journals and find therein, by pure accident, the marriage of one intimate old friend and the death of

y

They do not even send marriages and deaths in imply any cessation of

another. You excuse the married man because he is too much intoxicated with happiness to be responsible for any omission, and you excuse the dead man because he cannot send letters from another world. Still you think that somebody not preoccupied by bridal joys or impeded by the last paralysis might have sent you a line directly, were it only a printed card.

Not only do the writers of letters feel a difficulty in sending their manuscript across the sea, but people appear to have a sense of difficulty in correspondence proportionate to the distance the letter will have to traverse. One would infer that they really experience, by the power of imagination, a feeling of fatigue in sending a letter on a long journey. If this is not so, how are we to account for the fact that the rarity of letters from friends increases in exact proportion to our remoteness from them? A simple person without correspondence would naturally imagine that it would be resorted to as a solace for separation, and that the greater the distance the more the separated friends would desire to be drawn together occasionally by its means, but in practice this rarely happens. People will communicate by letter across a space of a hundred miles when they will not across a thousand.

The very smallest impediments are of importance when the desire for intercourse is languid. The cost of postage to colonies and to countries within the Postal Union is trifling, but still it is heavier than the cost of internal postage, and it may be unconsciously felt as an impediment. Another slight impediment is that the answer to a letter sent to a great distance cannot arrive next day, so that he who writes in hope of an answer

is like a trader who cannot expect an immediate return for an investment.

To prevent friendships from dying out entirely through distance, the French have a custom which seems, but is not, an empty form. On or about New Year's Day they send cards to all friends and many acquaintances, however far away. The useful effects of this custom are the following:

1. It acquaints you with the fact that your friend is still alive-pleasing information if you care to see him again.

2. It shows you that he has not forgotten you.
3. It gives you his present address.

4. In case of marriage you receive his wife's card along with his own, and if he is dead you receive no card at all, which is at least a negative intimation.1

This custom has also an effect upon written correspondence, as the printed card affords the opportunity of writing a letter, when, without the address, the letter might not be written. When the address is well known the card often suggests the idea of writing.

When warm friends send visiting-cards they often add a few words of manuscript on the card itself, expressing friendly sentiments and giving a scrap of brief but welcome news.

Here is a suggestion to a generation that thinks friendly letter-writing irksome. With a view to the sparing of time and trouble, which is the great object of modern life (sparing, that is, in order to waste in other ways), cards might be printed as forms of invitation are,

1 Besides which, in the case of a French friend, you are sure to have notice of such events by printed lettres de faire part.