A Modicum Of, A Dearth Of, Copious, Ample, Sundry, Manifold, Myriad

On the Diminishing Art of Letter-Writing There was a time when correspondence demanded patience: a letter, once sent, might travel for days before eliciting a reply, and in that interval, thought had ample room to settle before words were finally committed to paper. Today, by contrast, we exchange a myriad of hurried messages within minutes, each one thinner in substance than the last, however copious in number. This is not to suggest that earlier generations wrote with uniform brilliance; scholars have long noted a dearth of literary merit in the vast majority of historical correspondence, most of which concerned nothing more exalted than the price of grain or the health of distant relatives. Still, even the most mundane letters possessed a modicum of deliberateness that our present exchanges seldom achieve. Consider the sundry implements once required: the blotting paper, the sealing wax, the manifold small rituals of folding and addressing an envelope by hand. Each was a minor obstacle, and each obstacle, paradoxically, invited a kind of care that speed now renders unnecessary. Whether this trade-off constitutes progress remains, perhaps, ample cause for genuine debate.