On the importance of legible handwriting

[This is from a letter I wrote to James Madison on October 18, 1823, on the importance of legible handwriting.]

I return you Mr. [Tench] Coxe’s letter which has cost me much time at two or three different attempts to decipher it. Had I such a correspondent I should certainly admonish him that if he would not so far respect my time as to write to me legibly, I should so far respect it myself as not to waste it in decomposing and recomposing his hieroglyphics.