"Ma Femme vous entendez bien que ce n'est pas le tour d'vn galand homme, aux reigles de ce temps icy, de vous courtiser & caresser encore. Car ils disent qu'vn habil homme peut bien prendre femme: mais que de l'espouser c'est à faire à vn sot. Laissons les dire: ie me tiens de ma part à la simple façon du vieil aage, aussi en porte-ie tantost le poil. Et de vray la nouuelleté couste si cher iusqu'à ceste heure à ce pauure estat (& si ie ne sçay si nous en sommes à la dernière enchere) qu'en tout & par tout i'en quitte le party. Viuons ma femme, vous & moy, à la vieille Françoise." If friendship is maintained by correspondence, it is also liable to be imperilled by it. Not unfrequently have men parted on the most amiable terms, looking forward to a happy meeting, and not foreseeing the evil effects of letters. Something will be written by one of them, not quite acceptable to the other, who will either remonstrate and cause a rupture in that way, or take his trouble silently and allow friendship to die miserably of her wound. Much experience is needed before we entirely realize the danger of friendly intercourse on paper. It is ten times more difficult to maintain a friendship by letter than by personal intercourse, not for the obvious reason that letter-writing requires an effort, but because as soon as there is the slightest divergence of views or difference in conduct, the expression of it or the account of it in writing cannot be modified by kindness in the eye or gentleness in the tone of voice. My friend may say almost anything to me in his private room, because whatever passes his lips will come with tones that prove him to be still my friend; but if he wrote down exactly the same words, and a postman handed me the written paper, they might seem hard, unkind, and even hostile. It is strange how slow we are to discover this in practice. We are accustomed to speak with great freedom to intimate friends, and it is only after painful mishaps that we completely realize the truth that it is perilous to permit ourselves the same liberty with the pen. As soon as we _do_ realize it we see the extreme folly of those who timidly avoid the oral expression of friendly censure, and afterwards write it all out in black ink and send it in a missive to the victim when he has gone away. He receives the letter, feels it to be a cold cruelty, and takes refuge from the vexations of friendship in the toils of business, thanking Heaven that in the region of plain facts there is small place for sentiment. ESSAY XXIV. LETTERS OF BUSINESS. The possibilities of intercourse by correspondence are usually underestimated.