[31] A very odd but very real objection to the employment of these missives is that the receiver does not always know how to open them, and may burn them unread. I remember sending a short letter in this shape from France to an English lady. She destroyed my letter without opening it; and I got for answer that "if it was a French custom to send blank post-cards she did not know what could be the signification of it." Such was the result of a well-meant attempt to avoid the non-courteous post-card! [32] Besides which, in the case of a French friend, you are sure to have notice of such events by printed _lettres de faire part_. [33] I need hardly say that there has been immense improvement in this respect, and that such descriptions have no application to the Lancashire of to-day; indeed, they were never true, in that extreme degree, of Lancashire generally, but only of certain small localities which were at one time like spots of local disease on a generally vigorous body. [34] Littré derives _corvée_ from the Low-Latin _corrogata_, from the Latin _cum_ and _rogare_. End of Project Gutenberg's Human Intercourse, by Philip Gilbert Hamerton