What makes this so great is that it's private correspondence, unburdened by any audience except the recipient. It's hard to imagine such frankness in a contempo

What makes this so great is that it's private correspondence, unburdened by any audience except the recipient. It's hard to imagine such frankness in a contemporary NY Times column, with the usual liberal/progressive/SJW sycophancy at work. You wouldn't get lines like You began Catholic, that is to say you began with a system of values in stark opposition to reality.