e the offices of a common brotherhood.
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. What is the
reason of this deceit? there is a ground for it, no doubt. "This effect
defective comes by cause." The inditer has certainly some sympathy with
the bearer he so amply commissions and wordily exalts. This bearer has
some distress to be relieved, some faculty to exercise, some institution
to recommend, or some ware to dispose of. He that forwards him to us
very likely has first had him introduced to himself, has bestowed
attention and hospitable fellowship upon him, and now, growing weary of
the care and trouble and expense, is very happy to be rid of him at so
small a cost as that of passing him on to a distant acquaintance by a
letter of introduction, which the holder's business in life is to carry
round from place to place through the world! Sometimes dear companions
call on us to pay this tax; sometimes those who themselves have no claim
on us. But, be it one class or the other, how little they may consider
what they demand! Upon what a neglect or misappreciation of values the
proceed! Verily we need a new Political Economy written, deeper than
that of Malthus or