A century or two lends real dignity to the otherwise nosy business of reading letters addressed to someone else. But with these letters we are enabled to get a feeling for bygone eras that other media fail to deliver. Hopefully, we are forgiven by the ghosts of correspondents past.



Crosswriting – employed to save paper - has all but disappeared from modern correspondence, but then, so has paper. This letter, sent on April 2 and received on May 27, was carried by William Maury.