Deafness produces bizarre effects, reversing the natural order of things; the interchange of letters is the conversation of the de...af, and the only link with society. I would be in despair, for instance, over seeing you speak, but, instead, I am only too happy to hear you write.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In England, I was quite struck to see how forward the girls are made--a child of 10 years old, will chat and keep you company, whi...le her parents are busy or out etc.--with the ease of a woman of 26. But then, how does this education go on?--Not at all: it absolutely stops short.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You know I am given to antiquarian and genealogical pursuits. An old family letter is a delight to my eyes. I can prowl in old tru...nks of letters by the day with undiminished zest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The well-educated young woman of 1950 will blend art and sciences in a way we do not dream of; the science will steady the art and... the art will give charm to the science. This young woman will marry--yes, indeed, but she will take her pick of men, who will by that time have begun to realize what sort of men it behooves them to be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers h...imself to be part of an old and honorable tradition--of intellectual activity, of letters--and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why th...e writer hasn't written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Mark Twain] is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands when he was three years old. Thoroughly lik...eable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How frail and ephemeral ... is the material substance of letters, which makes their very survival so hazardous. Print has a perman...ence of its own, though it may not be much worth preserving, but a letter! Conveyed by uncertain transportation, over which the sender has no control; committed to a single individual who may be careless or inappreciative; left to the mercy of future generations, of families maybe anxious to suppress the past, of the accidents of removals and house-cleanings, or of mere ignorance. How often it has been by the veriest chance that they have survived at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »