The Three Most Beautiful Paragraphs You Will Read Today

The writing of letters has become a lost art. The arrival of the email sealed the fate of the letter in human discourse. Emails are fast, convenient and cost nothing to send. Letters require things like a pen, paper, an envelope and a stamp. Then once the recipient finally receives the thing the urgency of the communication has been lost. Personally I can’t remember the last time I sat down and wrote a letter, but yesterday alone I shot off a half dozen emails. I recently saw a skit some show did where they asked a bunch of random young people on the street if they would write their grandparents a post card. Even when given the cards most of them couldn’t figure out how to use them, where to write on the thing, where to put the stamp, and even what a stamp was. It was all good for a laugh but honestly how would someone 25 years old know how to send a post card in the first place? When was the last time you sent a post card.

I say all this because yesterday afternoon a dear friend sent me a text (of course) out of the blue. The subject concerned this great man…

E.B. White, famed essayist and author of Charlotte’s Web was often sent letters from strangers who admired his many contributions to top publications like Harper’s and the New Yorker. One such letter came from a man named Mr. Nadeau who wrote to ask White about his opinion on what he saw as the “bleak future for the human race.” Here is E.B. White’s reply…

I can’t imagine being able to craft such a poignant, lyrical and wise letter like this. These three short paragraphs feel like a balm, like a comforting hug, a warm bowl of soup on a bitter cold afternoon. I don’t know how White’s optimism was received by Mr. Nadeau but something tells me that perhaps he came away slightly less cynical about the future. The best part was, he now had a physical keepsake in his hand signed by a great man that he could place in a frame above his desk to remind him that a brighter day was possible.

Maybe this will become one of my projects when I retire. I will set about trying to resuscitate the craft of the hand written letter from the ash heap of history. 

But when time is of the essence…I’ll stick with emails.