Pine doesn't work here, at FutureQuest. My husband hosts elsewhere, and does what you describe (telnetting in and reading mail at a command prompt). Because of the way the mail is set up at FutureQuest, you can't do that. Instead, you might try some web interface for reading mail.
You might try
Panda Mail.
If you would like to install your own script, some of us have installed the Mailreader.com script on our own web space, which is kind of nifty. In a recent thread here, someone shared a PHP interface they had written, to which the source is available. I suspect, that if we just wait a few more weeks, we may have a webmail interface provided by FutureQuest?