I drop a letter in the New York post-office to-day; my friend in Boston receives it to-morrow and pens a reply at once, which finds me in New York within twenty-four hours. He may have understood and really answered my epistle. But suppose him to have waited a week. New matters have, meantime, taken possession of both his mind and mine; the topics, which were fresh when I wrote, have lost their interest; the bridge between us is broken down. His reply is worth little more to me than water to flowers cut a month since, or seed to a canary that was interred with tears last Saturday. Correspondence is conversation carried on under certain peculiar conditions, but subject to the same rules as conversation by word of mouth, except so far forth as they may be modified by those necessary conditions. You do not take your partner's bright saying home with you and bring a repartee to the next ball, by which time she has forgotten what her _bon mot_ was, and has another, every whit as good, upon her lips; you do not return a lead in whist at the next rubber; you do not postpone the laugh over the jokes of the dinner-table, as is fabulously narrated of Washington, until you have retired for the night. In social intercourse, minds must meet before one person can be brought to another's mood or both to a middle ground; it is the friction of contact, that creates conversation. A remark, not answered the instant after it has been made, is never answered. The bores and boors of society, not the gentlemen and ladies, ruminate upon what has been said, elaborate replies at leisure, and serve them up unseasonably.