Sincerely yours

I was looking for something that I could read a few pages of in bed last night, just to unwind, and pulled out my copy of “Funny Letters From Famous People,” a thoroughly enjoyable book edited by former “CBS Sunday Morning” host Charles Osgood. I also have another of Osgood’s books, “Nothing Could Be Finer Than A Crisis That Is Minor In The Morning.”

I think I bought “Funny Letters” just a year or two ago at the library’s used book sale. It’s exactly what the title promises: excerpts of amusing correspondence by public figures from George Washington to Groucho Marx. It’s exactly the type of book for reading a few pages of in bed before you doze off.

But last night, it got me to thinking about the lost art of letter-writing. There’s no longer any need for long, involved letters to catch your far-flung friend or relative up on the latest developments in your life. They already know, if not from social media than from much-more-immediate forms of communication like telephone and e-mail.

I happened to open the book last night to a letter by H.L. Mencken. Mencken had not heard from his good friend Theodore Dreiser in some time, and so — rather than write Dreiser a straightforward letter — he wrote a parody of a letter from the “Theodore Dreiser Widows & Orphans Relief And Aid Association,” in which the head of the mythical group explains to Mencken that Dreiser has…