perl/mail - inserting file text in message body

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I've got the following code

sub mail_report {
$Mailer = '/usr/sbin/sendmail joe@somewhere.net';
open MAIL,"|$Mailer";
print MAIL "Subject: $X connection attempt \n";
open MESSAGE, "<$outdir$X";
print MESSAGE '$outdir$X\n';
close MESSAGE;
close MAIL;
} #End sub mail_report

where I would like to insert text from a file as the body of the message at the line
print MESSAGE '$outdir$X\n';
The message is received OK however the text is not inserted into the body of the message.
Could someone point out the error of my ways?
Thanks

2 
sub mail_report {
   $Mailer = '/usr/sbin/sendmail joe@somewhere.net';
   open MAIL,"|$Mailer";
   print MAIL "Subject: $X connection attempt \n\n";#two newlines after subject
   open(MESSAGE, "<", "$outdir$X") or die "$!";
   print MAIL <MESSAGE>;
   close MESSAGE;
   close MAIL;
} #End sub mail_report

some mails servers and mail clients will reject emails with no "from" header

3

Thanks KevinADC
That fixed the problem.
thumper