Just as nobody visits anymore, nobody writes personal letters anymore. It's either the telephone or E-Mail if you have a computer. We do get letters from congressmen, assemblymen, agencies of all kinds, advertisements, and scams by the dozen. Of course, there are the bills which we do not welcome, but nothing is personal. Once going to the mailbox was an event. Was there a letter from a relative or a friend? Who sent the picture postcard? Surprise! No more.

Many of us do not keep personal letters after we answer them. But I owe the continuation of a friendship to a letter kept. My high school girl friend and her family were moved to the Middle West during World War II by the U. S. Government when some of the essential agencies were relocated so that if Washington DC were subject to enemy attack, the government would survive elsewhere. At the end of the war when it was time to return to Washington, in the course of packing, my friend found a letter I had written before we lost touch with one another. In the meantime, my husband and I had moved to Tioga County, but she found me. That friendship has endured for at least 65 years with occasional letters sent and frequent phone calls.

Some of us have not yet given up the art of letter writing. We write to our friends and family, to corporations complaining about the quality of their products or a letter of praise for a job well done, but these letters will never reach the auction block at Sotheby's. Should that stop us?