"What cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart."
— from the letters of Heloise to Abelard

"The post is the consolation of life."
— Voltaire

How long has it been since you’ve opened your mailbox and found a letter? A real letter, placed in an envelope, with someone’s handwriting inked across the front? Maybe your name was written in cursive. Maybe the envelope was scented or decorated by hand.

Do you remember your grandmother’s handwriting, the way all of her letters slant perfectly to the right and how she writes a capital S with such loopy flourish? Do you remember the first love letter you received from the girl you met at summer camp, how she dotted her i’s with hearts and how she closed with the phrase “Longer Letter Later?”

As a child, I used to write letters all of the time. For some reason, I would save the most important information for the end, in a P.S. The standard phrase “P.S. I love you” might appear, or there might be more crucial information such as “P.S. My brother has cooties.” Then, if the information was, in fact, even more urgent, I would delight in adding a “P.P.S.” or “P.P.P.S.” I could post-script all day.

We live now in the era of email, instant messaging and text-messaging. Supposedly Napolean Bonaparte wrote more than 75,000 letters in his lifetime. In December 1795, he was missing his fiancée, Josephine. He wrote to her, “Mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.” Now can you imagine that appearing as a text message?

Or consider these beautiful lines written in a letter from German poet Rainer Maria Rilke to a young, aspiring writer:

You are so young … have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

Can you imagine these words appearing as an email, perhaps with a silly emoticon attached? Would we be reading them today? Would a subject line like “Love the Questions” have cheapened the effect?

More of us rely on email in our hurried world, but think how much is lost in the process. Email is to letter writing as fast food is to a gourmet meal. With letter writing, time lengthens deliciously. If we send a letter, each day of the week that we await a reply becomes ripe with anticipation. By contrast, we toss off an email and feel furiously impatient if the reply doesn’t come back within the minute. Worse, I once asked a group of 20-year-olds if they emailed, and they rolled their eyes. “Who has time for that? We just text.”
Letters arrive on paper—watermarked stationery, personalized letterhead or even notebook paper torn from a spiral binder. Some are written in smudgy pencil. Others in pink marker or in the flowing ink of an old-fashioned fountain pen. We describe the way people write as their “hand,” as if, in their absence, we can almost feel them clasping our fingers in theirs.

Best of all, letters can be saved. When I was in college, my father used to write me letters at least once a month, just short notes telling me about his latest hunting trip or asking how I did on my final exams. I have saved them all in a shoe box and occasionally I take them out to read. Suddenly (one might say as quick as an instant message) I am 21 again. I am a student with the world at my doorstep, filled with all of the hopes and anticipation that that time of life holds. And the words of advice he offered then still ring true today. Had he “texted” me his thoughts, they would never have been saved. I couldn’t show his grandsons a treasure trove of correspondence. Quite simply, part of our history would have been lost. As it is now, it remains forever signed, sealed and delivered, a piece of my father I will always have.