Historian Rule #1: Don’t let your present hang-ups dictate how you view the past. Fine. But sometimes the past seems so gross it’s hard to ignore. Yesterday in the archives, for example, as I read through boxes of letters to and from Joseph Lancaster for my new book, I came across this 19^th-century weirdness:

“My Choice Young Friend?” Why not just “Dear Betsy?” I’m thinking the letter-writer was perfectly sincere. She wanted her young friend to know that she was loved. Still, I can’t seem to get this salutation out of the “haunted doll” category.

My other “Choice Young Friends”