【正确答案】To get letters from friends, especially airmail letters from overseas that bear the stamp of exotic climes, is unquestionably one of life’s greatest pleasures, provided, that is, that they do not call for a reply. Answering letters is a heavy price to pay for the enjoyment of reading letters. The inevitable consequence of tardiness or infrequency in answering letters is a corresponding reduction in, and ultimate cessation of, the pleasure of receiving letters, in which case friendship is prematurely broken off, until the day in sackcloth and ashes you summon up the willpower to put pen to paper again. Through this dilly-dallying the pleasure of receiving letters has turned to the misery of owing letters. I am an old lag in this respect: practically every one of the friends I have made in my comings and goings can recite from my crime sheet. W. H. Auden once admitted that he was in the habit of shelving important letters, preferring instead to curl up with a detective novel; while Oscar Wilde remarked to Henley: “I have known men come to London full of bright prospects and seen them complete wrecks in a few months through a habit of answering letters.” Clearly Wilde’s view was that to enjoy life one should renounce the bad habit of answering letters. So I am not the only one to be faint-hearted in the regard. 

【答案解析】无