no one writes this way anymore

"I am in receipt of your latest confession of folly and most earnestly pray that you do not despair of this precipitous reply, the reason for it being that if I do not do it now, I shall never do it. Thus spake the prophet.

I am both undone and removed by your foolishness. I had thought better of you. To think that you, inventer of the seductive newt hunt, should stoop to badinage with the lady louts of Newton College of th eInjured kidney is a slash too much for a man to bear. Especially since you have that latter day saint with the legs and things in Jamaica, who is obviously wise enough not to go ruining the work of the resident Chamber ofCommerce with post cards, and is hence and thereby to be clung to in this time of mutability and the rise of the antiChrist. It was entirely deplorable enough that you should devote yourself in accents mild to the devotion of these female featherheads wwhile, so to speak, in your cups, but, as the Philosopher says, to do such a thing in full and alleged possession of your faculties is something which no rational, risible man, having both body and sould and being designed for the vision beatific would permit himself or view in another without the mingled feelings of pity and fear irreducible by any form of catharsis. So help me Hannah"...

George V. Higgins to Timothy E. Guiney, 25 October 1961.

from a recently discovered trove of old correspondence.

Don't you wish they did?



Ok now I'm really leaving. Got a plane to catch in three hours. See you in Thailand.