Down the hill to Cookie’s place each morning, her of the long dark hair and frolicking eye, the world’s very most unlikeliest of postmistresses, to pick up the day’s burden of first-class, second-class, and third-class trash, down the hill I go, each morning with the hope of finding that rarest of delights, a real letter, a letter written for no other purpose than to give a moment’s pleasure, like the magical first letter Robert Browning ever sent to Elizabeth (which started out, “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett . . .”), or the lapidary lines of Max Beerbohm with their accompanying cartoons, or the silliness of Emily Dickinson, the private semaphores of Ezra Pound, the deep discourse of the Adams-Jefferson exchange.
The letter is the one art that cannot be “merchandised,” to use the suitably vulgar word. The perfect letter gives pleasure and requires no reply; to lay even the shadow of a burden on the recipient’s shoulder is to detract most grievously from the essence of the gift.
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