My Dear Jane,

I have lately made the acquaintance of a gentleman who possesses a most remarkable confidence in his own intelligence.

It is a quality I might have admired more readily had he not been so determined to announce it.

Our conversation began, innocently enough, with books. A subject upon which I am always delighted to dwell, particularly when the works in question have survived a century or two and may therefore be presumed to possess some small merit.

The gentleman, however, was of a different opinion.

Modern authors, he assured me, are vastly more intelligent than their predecessors. The great works of classical literature, he declared, are dreadfully boring, and their authors quite unable to compete with the superior minds of our present age.

I confess, Jane, that I was momentarily deprived of speech.

Dickens! Austen! The Brontës! All dismissed with the casual certainty of a man who has apparently settled the matter to his own satisfaction.

I attempted to explain that the beauty of such literature lies not merely in the story being told, but in all that remains untold. The quiet suggestion, the carefully placed observation, the meaning concealed beneath an ordinary exchange.

A good author, I suggested, does not always lead his reader by the hand. Sometimes he leaves a little mystery along the path, trusting that an attentive mind will discover it.

Whether my argument made any impression, I cannot say, for our conversation was interrupted by the general movement toward the door.

But not before the gentleman made a confession of such extraordinary character that I have been amusing myself with it ever since.

He intends, it seems, to create an artificial intelligence modeled upon himself.

His reason?

He wishes to have someone intelligent with whom to converse.

Now, Jane, I have encountered many curious ambitions in my time, but I do not believe I have ever met a gentleman who found the prospect of his own company quite so promising.

One cannot help admiring the efficiency of the arrangement. Why trouble oneself with the inconvenient opinions of other people when one might construct a companion already equipped with one's own?

I do wonder, however, how the experiment shall proceed.

Will the gentleman find his mechanical counterpart sufficiently stimulating? Will they spend their afternoons congratulating one another upon the remarkable advances of modern thought? Will they agree, with perfect unanimity, that Dickens ought never to have troubled himself with so many pages?

Or might the machine, having acquired a little independence of thought, develop an unexpected fondness for Great Expectations?

What a dreadful disappointment that would be.

I should dearly love to witness the conversation.

For my own part, I shall continue to keep company with the authors of former centuries, whose intelligence I have never found wanting and whose company requires neither electricity nor an especially flattering opinion of myself.

Indeed, I have always thought that the finest books are those which leave us feeling not how clever we are, but how much there remains to discover.

Perhaps that is the true pleasure of literature, Jane. Not to find a mind that agrees with our own, but to encounter one that enlarges it.

And if our gentleman should ever succeed in creating his intellectual companion, I sincerely hope the two will find something upon which to disagree.

Otherwise, I fear the conversation shall be terribly dull.

Yours, with affection and considerable amusement,

P.