How much we owe to these little paper messengers for the new treasures
of love and learning they have brought! It is hard to tell whose debt to
them is greatest, that of the giver, the bearer, or the receiver, or
whether, beyond all private benefit and pleasure, their chief result has
not been the improvement and refinement of the human race. But, it must
be confessed, the letter of introduction is too much fallen and
degenerate. Convenience, depredation, the compassing of by-ends, rather
than any loving communion, is too often its intent. It savors less of
the paradise of affection than of the vulgar wilderness of the world. We
are a little afraid of it, when it comes. A worthy man told me he knew
not whether to be sorry or glad, when he found a letter addressed to him
at the post-office. How does the balance incline, when a man or woman
stands before us with a letter of introduction in hand? We eye it with a
mistrust that it may turn out to be a tool of torture, serving us only
for a sort of mental surgery. Frequently, it has been simply procured,
and is but an impudent falsehood on its very face. The writer of it
professes an admiration he does not feel for the person introduced, to
whose own reading he leaves it magnificently open before its terms of
exaggerated compliment can reach him to whom it is sent.
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