Love Letters Half Price

Years ago at a Barnes and Noble fire sale, I bought a wan looking, jacketless copy of a book, simply titled "World's Great Letters". I was drawn to it because the author was none other than M. Lincoln Schuster, co-founder of the publishing company Simon and Schuster and I was pleased that the founder of a famous publishing house was a lover of letters.

It's a wonderful book overflowing with letters romantic, ruminative, vitriolic, gossipy, patriotic, poetic, sarcastic, brash and even mundane. My favorite is an imperious note from Wagner to an admirer, Baron Hornstein:

... I require an immediate loan of ten thousand francs. With this I can again put my life in order, and again do productive work. It will be rather hard for you to provide me with the sum; but it will be possible if you WISH it, and do not shrink from a sacrifice.

Reading the introduction tonight, I came across a curious claim by Schuster: "...in Venezuala the post office permits love letters to go through the mails at half rate, provided they are sent in bright red envelopes."

I looked a little on the web, and indeed this pdf file from a 1939 edition of a Canadian newspaper, "The Ubyssey" confirms it. What a great idea! You may not have heard, but the post office just raised the price of regular mail to 39 cents - they certainly weren't making a big fuss about it and I for one have apparently consigned a bunch of epistles to oblivion as a result. But while they're at it, why not levy rates according to the type of letter!?

Twice the regular rate should be charged for communications from insurance companies, credit card firms or banks. A special surcharge should be added to cellphone and utility bills. Solicitations from political parties should be prohibitively expensive to send.

But love letters... love letters should go at half price.