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 most of her guests before the hour set for the meal. Mrs. Barnes, sensitive though absent-minded, arrived without either having accepted or declined her invitation, it appearing later that she thought she really had accepted. Three days after the dinner had been given a tardy note of apology was received from Dr. Earle in which he explained that the arrival of some friends from Seattle just at the time Miss Gale's note came had entirely driven the matter of her dinner out of his mind, and he had just that morning come upon it while straightening up his desk. He trusted that his seeming neglect had not caused Virginia any undue annoyance.

We kept all the acknowledgments, varied and many-colored as they were, and looked them over, after the dinner was a thing of the past, and commented on them. There was considerable food for thought in the little pile of envelopes and in the collection of bizarre notes which they contained.

"If these people," Virginia said to me, "who have been to boarding schools and college, who have traveled in every civilized country in the world and in some un-


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 civilized ones, who are the social leaders in an uncommonly cultivated and educated community, are as ignorant and as careless of social forms and conventions as my guests were, don't you think you ought to write something for the education of young people and the general public with reference to these matters?"

"I believe I will," I replied. And that explains why I am giving such specific information and directions in this chapter. I remember very little that I learned in college, a condition not uncommon I imagine, but one of the things I do recall was said by my professor of English.

"In explaining anything to a general audience you should remember that they are always more ignorant than you think." If I err, then, in this direction, blame it on my early teaching.

Every one receives formal notes at one time or another even if he does not acknowledge them, for a large percentage of such communications are for one reason or another—carelessness, or indifference, or ignorance, or the delay which makes it unnecessary to do so many things in life—not answered or acknowledged at all.

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 There are announcements of births and deaths, engagements and marriages; there are invitations to weddings and dinners, and there is for the writer of these notes a correct form to be used and for the recipient something to be said or done and a proper time and a proper method of saying or doing it.

The formal note of invitation or announcement should be written or engraved. There is no more logical reason why it should not be printed than there is why one should not eat with his knife or keep his hat on in the house. Children used to be told that there was a danger of cutting themselves if they ate with their knives, but there is equal danger of wounding themselves with the prongs of a fork. There is really no reason why we should not eat with our knives excepting a conventional one. It is not the custom; refined people generally in English-speaking countries do not do it; and there is an end of the matter. The same thing is true of the printed announcement or invitation or calling card. It shows a lack of social experience, unacquaintance with careful social forms, it suggests the common and the


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 vulgar. You ask why? There is no reason. People with the widest social experience and the best breeding just don't do it that way, and that is all.

It is in quite good form to omit titles in the formal note and call every man plain 'Mister' though the one who does this will sometimes give offense to judges and doctors of medicine, and to military officials, who commonly adhere very closely to the titles to which they can legitimately lay claim. A friend of mine, a high college official, was introduced by a physician as "Mr. Jones" though he was entitled to be called "Dean," but when he in turn introduced the physician as "Mr. Brown," he was corrected by the medicine man and reminded that he was "Doctor Brown." It is well, therefore, to keep these points in mind, for though it is never discreditable or discourteous to call any ordinary man "Mister," yet some men will not like it; and more women will object if their husband's titles are not recognized. If you ignore the convention, you must not be annoyed if some people think you do not belong in the first class.

It is a general custom in formal notes


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 when names are used to write them in full. It is better to say, "Mr. and Mrs. James Brown Scott" than "Mr. and Mrs. James B. Scott." We can properly write "Mr. and Mrs. Scott" if their identity is sufficiently clear to warrant the omission of the surnames, but it is not good form to use initials only, as "Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Scott." Such a method is too business-like and suggests haste and lack of care.

The formal note is written in the third person throughout as:

If the persons concerned all live in the same city, only the street number need be given at the end of the note, and in cases of intimacy even, that may be omitted.

In the engraved invitation it is not always so easy to adhere strictly to the third person throughout the note. In this country at least, the engraved invitation


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 commonly changes to the second person in order to avoid the writing in of the name of the one invited, and so follows something of a mongrel method. Such an invitation reads as follows:

Here the invitation uses the pronoun "your" to apply to any one to whom the invitation may be addressed instead of including the name of each specific individual invited.

In England the third person would be strictly adhered to whether the invitation were written or engraved, and would read:


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 A blank space would be left in the engraved note for writing in the name "Miss Althea Marsh." Such a procedure seems, perhaps, finical or overparticular for an American, and it is seldom followed, though if we want to be punctiliously correct we should follow it.

In general in such notes most punctuation is omitted excepting the period following abbreviations, and no abbreviations should be used excepting the most conventional ones, like "Mr." and "Mrs."

The better the materials used in the writing of any note, or in an engraved note, the more favorable impression will be made, and this is especially true of the formal note. Tinted paper, unless it be gray, is in very questionable taste; white is always the safest; pink and lavender are, I think, most commonplace and vulgar. They suggest the child or the rustic. Double sheets of note paper of any adult conventional size or correspondence cards approximately three and one-half by five and one-half inches of thoroughly good quality are the most appropriate materials to be used in writing such notes, and refined people commonly use only black ink.


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 The paper or the cards may bear the writer's monogram or coat of arms or an embossed street address. The envelopes should fit the paper once folded and should be of the same quality as the paper. This last specification should go without saying, I suppose, but I have seen so many instances where it did not do so, that I hesitate to let the matter pass without additional emphasis or comment.

The formal note of invitation should always have a formal acknowledgment, and there is but one general form. The specific choice of nouns and adjectives may be varied to suit the emotions or the temperament of the individual, but the form is the same. You can be "charmed" or "delighted" or "very much pleased" to accept an invitation as the mood or the circumstance strikes you; you can "regret" with any adverb attached that pleases you, but you should not vary from a set, arrangement and order. If you must decline an invitation, it is not good form to say that you "will be unable to accept" the invitation, but that you "are unable." The present tense is always the correct one, as for instance:


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There are so many varieties of formal notes and announcements that one is sometimes at a loss to know just what he ought to do or say. I find in the morning mail various formal announcements. George Ward, an old friend of mine, has gone into partnership with some one in Spokane, and he wants me to know it; Randolph Eide and his wife have a new baby, and a little card gives me the information; John Honens is going to be married to Elizabeth Butler, whom I have never met, and her parents, with whom, also, I am unacquainted, invite me to the wedding; Betty Crawford has been married to a man I have never before heard of, and her parents announce the wedding. What should I do in each of these several cases?

The first note is simply for my information and does not demand an acknowledgment, though if I am polite and


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 interested, as I should be, I may write George informally and congratulate him upon his advancement and assure him that I am glad to know of his success. Courtesy and diplomacy both require that I should reply to the announcement of the baby's birth. Parents expect a reply, for they are usually pretty sensitive regarding any lack of attention to their offspring and resent any slights or neglect in that direction more even than they would if these were directed toward themselves. Such announcements, however, should bear somewhere an address to which an acknowledgment may be sent, and in most cases which come under my notice do not do so. I shall have to write Mr. and Mrs. Eide and tell them how lucky they are to have this young American to train and to spend their money on, and how much I envy them the opportunity. This note, also, will be an informal one. The wedding invitation requires one note and admits of two others. I must accept or decline the invitation of the parents at once, and this must be done in a formal note addressed to them and similar to the invitation. I ought to write an informal


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 note to John Honens congratulating him on his marriage and wishing him well, for I have known him all his life, he has done me the courtesy to recall our old friendship at the time of his approaching marriage, and it is to him I owe the pleasure of the invitation. I should be rather thoughtless and crude, and I should miss an opportunity to cement a very happy relationship, if I did not return his courtesy with a similar one. If I feel like making a little present to the newly formed household, this must be sent to the bride, and even though I do not know her, the fact that I am a near friend of her husband to be gives me the right to address her in an informal note and to say whatever pleasant and gracious things may come to my mind. If I do not wish to write her I may simply enclose my calling card with whatever I send.

In general, then, every formal announcement or invitation admits of an acknowledgment or requires one. The invitation should be accepted or declined on the day it is received. Such a procedure is only in justice to the hostess who must make specific preparation for the enter-


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 tainment of her guests. If you are uncertain it is better to decline than to annoy her by holding up her plans for your convenience. If you want to make friends, if you would like to gain a reputation for thoughtful courtesy and punctilious regard for social conventions, you will in some way acknowledge every formal note which you receive even if the conditions existing do not actually require such an acknowledgment, and you will do it with your own hand even though the stenographer is unoccupied while you are doing it, for the stenographer, useful and necessary as she is, is for purposes of business and not for social courtesy.


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The business letter is not different from other sorts of letters excepting that it has a somewhat different purpose. It is not to amuse or to please or to show social courtesy; its object is to get things done, to present facts, to give information, or to ask for it. Its construction is logical and direct rather than imaginative. Its appeal is to the intellect and to the judgment rather than to the feelings or the emotions. "Business English," about which so much has been said in recent years and about which books even have been written, is not a different genus of English from that employed in any other form of prose discourse. We should use the same forms of correct speech and the same sentence structure in doing business whether orally or in writing as we do in making love or in writing an essay or in giving an after-dinner speech, excepting that our approach and our rhetorical style should perhaps sometimes be different.

In a business letter we should get at the thing on hand at once. This does not mean that in writing such a letter we


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 should use the condensed method employed in a telegram and by the omission of subjects, predicates, and articles attempt to say as much as we can in as few words as possible. It is as necessary in a business letter to use complete sentences with all their relationships made evident and with all their physical members intact, as it is in any other sort of letter. Terseness, directness are in no way synonymous with the omission of vital and necessary parts of a sentence.

"Would like catalog of your school," a business man writes me. "Have son who is now in high school and will graduate in spring. Want him to take engineering course. Would like to know cost and possibility of finding good lodging place for him, Yours"

His communication resembles a night letter, kept punctiliously within the conventional fifty words as if he were making a strenuous effort to economize time and to reduce expense, rather than a business letter from an intelligent man who has something normal to say. Translated into English it would read:


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Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Clarissa Bishop with reference to certain matters pertaining to the settlement of her estate is an admirable illustration of what a business letter should be like. It is personal and friendly; it does not waste a single word, its sentences are simple and complete, and it goes without circumlocution directly to the point. When you read it you know that it was written by a real man writing to a specific individual.

"A friend of yours, Dr. Cheney, has been consulting me in your behalf about the estate of your late husband. It is not improbable that I shall pass through Le Roy next Sunday; and if I do, I will call to see you.

"I understand your husband died without making a will and without any child;


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 and if this is so, there is no doubt that you, as his widow, are entitled to half of his real estate and all his personal property, after the debts of the estate are paid. Give yourself no uneasiness about this whatever; and be tempted into no bargains or agreements, with interested parties, about this matter."

There is a pretty general feeling, also, that abbreviations, contractions, and figures are not only admissible in a business letter, but that such a letter loses something of its business-like character if they are not used. Certain texts on "Business English" would give this impression. Abbreviations are most frequently an indication of carelessness, or haste, or laziness. They have about the same effect upon the appearance of an otherwise good-looking business letter as a man who goes to a party and who wears no coat. The writer gets on more quickly, but the effect of their use is seldom a pleasing one. The only advantage in using figures instead of words in any letter is that figures economize space and appeal more directly to the eye than do numbers expressed in written words. Their appearance is not so good,


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 and most careful writers do not now use them. Letters written by business men who have given thoughtful attention to form, are not marred by sentences without subjects and verbs, and are remarkably free from all sorts of abbreviations. Brevity is a quality which should be sought, but it is not dependent upon the omission of necessary elements of a sentence, or upon the regular use of abbreviations; it is attained by the elimination of unnecessary details and superfluous qualifying phrases. Directness is a very essential quality in a business letter. When one means "no" it is just as well to say it at once.

"Goshen College has applied for admission to the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools," I wrote a University president a few years ago, "and the executive committee of the Association, knowing that you are acquainted with both the standards of the Association and the equipment and curriculum of the College, would like to know if you think the College comes up to the requirements of the Association and if you are willing unqualifiedly to recommend its admission."


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 His reply came back in a few days as follows:

"I have known President Cooke of Goshen College for many years and have the very highest regard for him. He and I were in college together, and have kept up our friendship ever since. He is a man of excellent training and of the highest ideals. Since going to Goshen he has reorganized its faculty and materially increased its endowment. He has the confidence and the respect of every one with whom he is associated, and his work and influence in building up the college have been extremely gratifying. He is in every way an excellent executive and a Christian gentleman." And so he rambled on for two pages.

In acknowledging this letter I said, "Your personal relations with President Cooke of Goshen College, I gather from your letter which I have just received, have been very pleasant, and your testimonial as to his character and his work at the college I find interesting. What I want to get, however, is a direct statement as to whether you think the college is at the present time meeting the requirements


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 OUR FORTUNE.

BY A. M. DANA. This morning, as I was riding with my daugh ter, Vivia, through a poor neighborhood in the lower part of the city, on what—I need not be ashamed to own here—was an errand of charity, I pointed to the third-story windows of a dingy tenement-house, saying, "There, my dear, is the place where you were born.”

Vivia did not sneer—I trust I have brought her up too well for that—but she shuddered under her ermine and Astrakan, turned her bright, young face away, and I knew by her expression that she tried to forget the unplea sant recollection in glowing anticipations of Mrs. Ashton's ball, which is to be this evening.

Ah, well! I could not blame her. For her this shambling old tenement held no tender memo ries or hallowed associations, Her outlook lies toward the future, But for myself—while our carriage rolled along the dirty street, among the ash-boxes and piles of garbage—I fell into a dreamy reverie, living over again some of the happiest days of my youth, while I gazed back almost lovingly upon the rickety old house where the first home-nest of my married life was built. We sere both poor, my husband and I. Harry was a struggling clerk, and I an underpaid teacher; but, oh! how thankful I often am for the sublime courage which made us dare to com bine our freehold estates of poverty and love!

I have no patience with those who defer mar- riage until a fortune is made. True, they escape the toils and cares of poverty, but they also miss the high lessons of hope and faith that spring from them. The oft-quoted proverb, which I think must have been in Tennyson's mind when he wrote,

“Oh! I see thee, old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart," namely, ‘‘When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window,” always reminds  me of a passage of Holy Writ, which is, however,   entirely irrelevant to it. I mean, “The hire- ling fleeth because he is an hireling.” Depend  upon it, true, heaven-born love always nestles,  cricket-like, upon the coldest hearth-stone. The hireling which fleeth through the window is at  best but a weakly sentimentalism, bearing no  more resemblance to true love than does base alloy to fine gold.

Therefore, should young Edwards, my hus- band’s clerk, ask for Vivia’s hand to-morrow,  so I were sure that this vital requisite was not  lacking, I would bid them God speed, and be-  stow my hearty blessing upon their union; for  he has ability, he is thrifty, he will get on. Character is better than fortune!

But I was talking of my own early days. Sometimes I smile now when I remember the details of my humble menage. How proud I was of the simple rug-carpet, made by my own hands, which covered the floor of the room which was to us parlor, dining-room, and kitchen in one! What an intimate acquaintance my hands formed with plumbago, as I rubbed- away at my cook- ing-stove with zeal worthy of Aladdin! And  how I used to admire my table, when set out with a snowy cloth and dishes of plain white  delf! Sevres and Majolica have given no keener enjoyment since.

Then my flowers. Yesterday, Roberts, our Scotch gardener, came to summon me to the conservatory to see my Flor del Espiritu Santo, which had bloomed at last. And it was, indeed,  a glorious sight, that pure white dove hovering  within the crimson petals; but I don’t think it  gave me quite as much pleasure as the box of  mignonnette I raised on the window-ledge of  the old tenement-house, or the row of fragrant  geraniums on the sill within. Of course, we had plenty of neighbors in those times; and though we have since formed many  pleasant acquaintanceships with persons of  higher rank, we still continue to count among  our warmest friends some with whom we mingled in daily intercourse in the old rookery. Prominent among these are the Grobes, 4 With little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's } German family, who lived just across the hall . from us. I never met a truer lady than Madam namely, ‘‘When poverty comes in at the door, } Grobe. Shortly after we moved in, her cbil- love flies out of the window,” always reminds} dren, seven, were taken with scarlet-fever, and me of a passage of Holy Writ, which is, however, } I assisted in nursing them, thereby winning her entirely irrelevant to it. I mean, “The hire-; sincerest gratitude. I have always thought that ling fleeth because he is an hireling.” Depend } she overestimated my services, for it would have upon it, true, heaven-born love always nestles, } been strange, indeed, if I, a young, untrammeled cricket-like, upon the coldest hearth-stone. The} woman, could not afford to lose a few night’s hireling which fleeth through the window is at sleep to aid a suffering neighbor. ~ It is not best but & weakly sentimentalism, bearing no} among the poor that such selfishness is found.

Years ago our kind German friends moved to  the great West, and Herr Grobe is now an  �

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 laid down by the North Central Association and if you would recommend its immediate admission." In his next letter, which consisted of four lines," he said that he was sorry to have to say that he must answer "no" to both of my queries. Through indirectness, in his first letter, he was attempting to evade my questions and to have me draw an entirely false conclusion. He knew what was true, but he wanted to evade the responsibility of stating the truth; he hoped so to disguise the truth that it might appear in a more favorable light than if baldly stated. The same effect is often attained when the writer is in doubt as to just what he wants to say. Like a speaker who has made no preliminary preparation, he wanders on, hoping that by saying a good deal he will ultimately reach something that is direct and definite.

One of the most skilful letter-writers whom I know always very carefully plans his letters before he begins to dictate them. When in his correspondence he comes upon a letter difficult to answer, he lets it go until the next day, takes it home with him at night, and writes out in direct and com-


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 plete sentences the specific points he wants to make in his reply, very much as he was taught in college to prepare a formal brief for an argument. Then, when he is ready to dictate his letter or to write it out in longhand, he knows what he wants to say, and he gets at it without circumlocution or delay. The man who carefully plans his letters before he begins to write them, especially if they are difficult, saves time, gains clearness, and says more in fewer words than one who rushes in unprepared to tackle a difficult epistolary job.

This last method of planning carefully before putting statements into cold type is especially to be commended if there is a possibility that what one says may be quoted, or passed from one person to another, or used finally as evidence. In such cases one can not be too careful in the expression of what one wants to say.

Every business letter if possible should be complete in itself. It should show at once both the address of the writer and of the one to whom it is written. It should state the business with which it is concerned briefly and clearly. It should not


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 be necessary to see the envelope in which the letter came or, excepting in unusual circumstances, to refer back to previous correspondence to get at the facts essential to the answering of the letter in hand. The references to the subject under consideration should be accurate and full enough to require no further investigation or explanation. I have on my desk as I write these sentences a letter which I can by no possibility answer intelligently until I get further details. The writer's reference to the business under discussion is vague, and his previous correspondence, even when I have dug it out of the files, does not adequately disclose the significance of the matters to which he refers in his last letter. If one has only a very limited correspondence, then he may reasonably be expected to carry in mind most of the details of what has been previously said, but if his letters run from fifty to one hundred or five hundred a day and cover a wide range of topics the case is different. An illustration is before me.

"Your letter with reference to my son's scholastic record for the past semester is


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 before me. Will you not please give me some explanation as to why he has done so badly and how I can help to improve conditions?"

A woman's name is signed to the letter, and it is a very common name. I go through all records of my office to find a son whose home address corresponds to the one the woman had given in her letter, but I can discover none. Then I search through the long list of delinquent students whose parents I have communicated with in recent weeks, and ultimately I find the man I am looking for and the reason for not discovering him more readily. His mother, interesting woman, has been married the second time, and the second husband's name was different from the name of her first husband and consequently different from her son's name. As she had written me once before she had supposed that I would recall this slight irregularity. The omission of the detail which she thought trifling, had, however, cost me the expenditure of a considerable amount of time and energy. When you read your business letter before you sign it, as you always should, make sure that


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 what you have said will not need further investigation or explanation before it is clear to the man who is to receive it.

I have learned nothing more fully during the years that I have done business with various sorts of people than that surprise or the unexpected is the most compelling influence one can use with people. If I call a student to my office to talk over things with him, he has worked out before he comes in all that I am going to say to him and what his defense is to be. If he has been derelict, he has an adequate explanation; if he has been absent from classes, he has a dozen legitimate excuses on his tongue's end. My only hope of getting anywhere is to present my case in a way for which he is not prepared. A clever book salesman comes to see me once a year, and though I think before he makes his annual call that I am all steeled and set for him, I invariably fall, and yet he has never really asked me to buy. He studies my personal tastes, he lays his wares before me alluringly and always in a different manner from the one he employed in any previous year. His coming fascinates me, for I am always anxious and


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 interested to see what new method he will employ to get my trade. I am never fully prepared; he always surprises me; he is practically always too much for me. I think I have never been able to resist him but once. I am wondering now what strategic move he will make next year.

The same principle holds in writing business letters. In nothing else does originality, surprise, the unexpected count more toward bringing success, and in winning your correspondent over to your way of thinking. When you say what he expects you to say, you are dull, and he gives little attention to your line of talk; when you spring the unexpected he wakes up and finds some interest in what you have to say. We are all prepared to meet the conventional; it is only when the unexpected arises that we are taken off our guard.

The father of a student who had failed wrote me a year or two ago. He is a business man in a city of some size in a neighboring state, and though he seems to know business, he doesn't use the English language with the accurate care one might desire.


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 "Donald says he took French and passed his examination and that his teacher, hurrying off, lost his paper and he got no credit. If that's true I don't think much of your method of running a school after a pupil has done the work and paid the tuition. And you put him on probation on failure of the teacher. It don't look to me like a square deal, and I will give you a chance to explain before I take him out of school. Another study, Rhetoric. He sprained his ankle and couldn't be at the examinations. It looks to me you could of given him an examination without putting him on probation. It looks to me that if a teacher is any good he could of given him a grade on daily recitations. If he isn't doing good work, why not? I will not keep him in school a minute longer unless he is doing good work."

My answer was brief. I stated that the boy's paper in French was not lost but that he had failed the final examination. He did have a sprained ankle, but this fact did not keep him away from his rhetoric test. He was behind in his assignments and would have failed even had he taken


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 the test, and knowing this he did not go. His work at the present time, I said, was not good. If the father wished to withdraw his son, I suggested, that his own state university was an excellent institution. The tuition was somewhat higher than in our own, but the college was nearer his home and he might there find conditions and methods of instruction which would better satisfy him. I think my answer was not what he expected, though it must have been satisfactory to him, for he did not withdraw his son, and when later he visited him he called on me, and we had a very placid interview.

A great many people seem to object to the use of the personal pronoun "I" in business letters. I have never understood why, for it is as good a pronoun as there is in the language, and it expresses as clear and direct a meaning as any word in use. I have known men to go far out of their way to say "we" or "the writer' when they really meant "I." In addition to failing to say what they actually wanted to say, they lost a good deal in directness and in personal appeal. Of course, if one writes as the representative of a firm or a


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 family it is quite right to say "we," but if it is the letter of one individual to another there is no adequate reason why the more personal "I" should not be used. It is self-consciousness or exaggerated modesty to want to conceal your personality by the use of general terms, and such use results in stiffness and formality. It is argued sometimes that in using "we" the writer divides the responsibility for his statements, but he really deceives no one.

In the friendly letter or the letter of courtesy there is almost always a close acquaintanceship or even an intimacy between the correspondents which makes the immediate recognition of the writer of the letter concerned quite easy. Even if the penmanship is obscure or irregular the signature of the writer can always be deciphered without much difficulty. A very different situation, however, obtains as regards the business letter. A great many business letters come from persons one has never heard of before—persons whose names are strange and unfamiliar and almost impossible to decipher. Men often seem to torture their signatures into the most impossible hieroglyphics resem-


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 bling in no way the characters which we were taught in the elementary schools. The reasons for this illegibility are sometimes haste, sometimes carelessness, and often an attempt to form a signature that would be difficult to imitate or forge. Some of these signatures look more like a Chinese laundry bill than an attempt to write English script. I receive letters regularly from a Boston attorney whose name appended to his communications does not show a single character which has any semblance to anything in the written alphabet in English; I have letters before me from a country banker and a Chicago business man that are as vague to me as the inscriptions of the Rosetta stone. It is only by referring to the names engraved at the top of the sheet that I am able even approximately to guess what the characters are intended to represent. I have been told that my own signature often is not much more intelligible.

Unless a business man has his name printed or engraved somewhere upon his stationery he should write carefully enough for a stranger to recognize his name with a minimum of effort. Anyone


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 can learn to write his name legibly if he will only take the time and the pains. It is conceit to suppose that one is so well known that his signature will be generally recognized no matter how illegibly written it may be. A great many people feel as I do about it, as is proved by the following letter which came to my desk since I began writing these paragraphs:

"I am in receipt of a letter under date of March 23rd written on University of Illinois stationery, by a student in the University who is applying for a place as teacher. I am not able to decipher his or her name, and therefore, am writing to you.

"The name looks as if it might be Arlone Tumley or Artoro Sumley. It may be that the letter is an 'L' or an 'S' or it may be intended for an 'F' and you may be able to find the name listed in your files. Please have this person write me again.

"I am very sorry that a person applying for English work or for any position in the High School can not write well enough to be read." So are we all, say I.

It seems like a silly platitude to insist that business letters, more than other let-


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 ters in fact, should be answered promptly. There should usually be some acknowledgment on the day on which the letter is received. Neglect and delay in answering important letters is a habit, which one can cultivate, like staying away from Church or sleeping late in the morning. There is little excuse for it but selfishness. Even if one's business does not require that he keep a regular stenographer and makes it necessary for him to write his own letters, yet if he will have a place to keep his unanswered mail and a time for attending to it, the matter will become as regular as meals or as keeping his face washed, and it is in fact quite as important as either of these physical details. An unanswered business letter brands a man as careless and unreliable.

There are a good many types of business letters, but the general style and form of each is about the same. If a printed or engraved letterhead is used, this will take care of a considerable number of details. It will ordinarily indicate the writer's name, business, and business address, with a date line often partially filled in. The envelope in which it is mailed should carry


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 a return card in one corner indicating the name and address of the writer so that the letter may be returned if it cannot be delivered to the one to whom it is written. The return address should be written or printed on the front of the envelope and not on the back as it is done by some men and most women. The letter given below is a satisfactory illustration of the form and content of a good business letter and the envelope containing it:

November 30, 1920.

Mr. John L. Jones,

Henry, Illinois.

My dear Mr. Jones:

Relative to our hasty conversation of last evening in regard to an enclosed car, I wish to refer you to the enclosed statement which coincides precisely with my views as to the automobile situation. First, I assure you that Dodge Brothers' cars will not be reduced in


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 price. Next, I am able to procure cars at present, in fact am accumulating them as fast as my finances will permit.

I have in stock at present a car which I believe will please you and the situation is as follows: I expect to carry some of the cars that I am receiving until March 1. With this in view, I will make you the following proposition. I will deliver you the car immediately and in settlement will take your personal note to March 1, without interest, or, if you prefer paying for it at this time, I will deduct interest at seven percent from the time of delivery to March 1.

Inasmuch as your preference is a closed car, I assure you that winter driving will be fully appreciated in one and with the above proposition you can have the use of both your money and the car.

If you are interested I should be pleased to show you the car at your home at any time.

Very truly yours,

Dodge Brothers Dealer.

IMB:D

Enclosure


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If an enclosure accompanies the letter it should be mentioned in the body of the letter, and the word enclosure placed at the lower left-hand corner in order that whoever is responsible for placing the enclosure in the envelope may not be required to read the whole letter in order to see what is required. Nothing is more annoying than to receive a letter which was supposed to contain a draft or a circular or a sample of a textile or something or other and then find that the important enclosure has been omitted. "There ought t' be a heavy penalty," Abe Martin says, "fer writin' 'enclosed find clippin',' and then not puttin' th' clippin' in."

Very few business men do more than to read and sign their letters after they have


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 dictated them, and many letters, when the stenographer can be depended upon to write what one has said, are "dictated and not read." A friend of mine signs his letters "read but not dictated," for the reason, he explains, that he likes to convey the impression that he is sufficiently interested in his correspondence and his correspondents to give a little attention to both. There is a suggestion of insolence, of superiority, in the "dictated but not read" that is irritating to not a few people. It is a question whether or not one should admit under his own signature that he thinks so little of the accuracy of what he has written that he is willing to let it go without verifying it. The one who receives such a letter has the right to feel a little slighted, a little humiliated, and especially so if the correspondence is of any especial importance.

It is often very desirable that the writer of a letter should indicate his position or his title. If he is the secretary or the president of the firm, if he is pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, or director of the corporation he should indicate this fact below his signature. The importance of


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 what one says is very often influenced largely by one's position, and it is generally wise to indicate this.

Whatever the situation may be the tone of a business letter should always be courteous. "The customer is always right" is a phrase pretty hard to live up to in many instances, but it is always wise to do so. No matter how sarcastic and scathing a letter may be, even if it approach the limit of insult, there is everything to be gained by keeping one's self-possession, and exhibiting self-control. The most effective reply to such a letter is brevity, dignity, and courtesy. The man who will not be thrown off his guard and descend to discourtesy will ultimately win.

A good many people feel that the grammatical, carefully phrased letter with well-constructed sentences and correctly spelled words is essential only when doing business with the cultivated. I listened not long ago to a young college graduate of a middle west institution who was trying to impress me with the practical character of a set of books of which he was trying to dispose. He made all sorts of crude errors, his pronouns seldom revealed any


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 correct relationships, and his verbs were tortured into the weirdest forms.

"Why do you speak so murderously bad?" I asked him when he gave me a chance to say something.

"The ordinary vernacular always makes a hit with the 'hicks, he replied, "and it takes me a while to readjust myself when I return to civilization."

I am sure his psychology is wrong, and that care and correctness in speech and in writing is more effective with even the untrained and illiterate than is slovenly, careless, ungrammatical English. The neatest, tidiest letter is always the best one, no matter who receives it.

In general all business letters are alike. They follow the same courteous dignified and impersonal tone. They are cast in the same mechanical form, they employ the same sort of stationery. As to the last, the better the quality and the more conservative the appearance the more effective it is. Cheap, flashy stationery advertises the writer himself as cheap and second-class. There are, however, certain types of business letters which are entitled to a separate and specific treatment.


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 There is the letter of recommendation. Any one can accumulate a collection of letters of recommendation, and I would almost venture the statement that he can get any one he pleases to write them. The most of such letters that I have been privileged to read say little and say it badly. A letter of recommendation should tell the truth. Ministers and school teachers, in my experience, write the worst ones and are most likely to show little respect for the principles of truth. They often injure rather than help the people whom they flagrantly praise by painting for them a character which it is impossible for even a saint in Heaven to live up to. When any one in a letter of recommendation tells more than the truth, he does the person recommended a real damage; even the truth that he tells is eventually discredited. Such a letter need not be confined wholly to words of praise. When we recommend men we are talking about human beings who, as nearly perfect as they may be, must still have some qualities which might be improved upon. One gives the strongest impression of sincerity when one mentions the weaknesses as well


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 as the strong points of a person about whom he is writing.

I recall that I won the everlasting enmity of a young fellow at one time who got hold of a letter I had written about him in which I had said that he "lacked aggressiveness." The young man argued that if he asked me to write about him I was under obligations to say only such things as would help him to get the position he desired or would be complimentary or creditable to him. If I could not say these things, he felt that I should not write at all. He was on the whole a good man, but he could not see that a frank truthful presentation of his qualities was more likely to help him along than a flattering untruthful description. Which leads me to say also that a letter of recommendation is the property of the man to whom it is addressed. It is in the nature of a confidential statement from the writer to the one written to. It is discourtesy and a breach of confidence to put it, without the consent of the writer, into the hands of the one about whom it is written.

When I have a man recommended to me I want to know something of his train-


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 ing, his age, his experience, his character. If he has specially attractive qualities or traits, if he has special talents, if he is possessed of idiosyncrasies, I am glad to be prepared for these. It ought to be possible to say something individual about any man, for no two of us are alike. "Mr. George Ward came to me directly from college and has been my secretary for three years," wrote a friend of mine. "He is not so diplomatic at all times as I should wish, but he is dependable, he is loyal, he is intelligent, and he likes to work. I have never given him any piece of work to do, no matter how difficult, that he did not do well. It will give me no discomfort if he is willing to stay with me." It was a good picture of an efficient man. Sometimes one is asked to recommend a man for a position for which he seems to have no qualifications. The only reasonable thing to do in such a case is to tell the man that from your point of view he is not suited for the job that he is wanting to fill and that you can not conscientiously recommend him. Such a course is the only way to be truthful and just to the employer and his prospective employee. It


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 takes courage to do it, but in the end it pays.

I believe I have written more letters of recommendation than any other man living of my age, because the college student and the college graduate are persistently looking for a job where references are required, and I have been a willing victim. Nearly every mail brings me in such requests, and yet I do not recall that many fellows have asked my permission to give my name as reference or have thanked me for the letter that I wrote. If you give a man as reference, the least you can do is to ask his permission beforehand or to announce to him what you have done, and if you ask him to write a letter for you, the minimum compensation you can offer him is to thank him.

Then there is the application for employment, the attempt to get a job by mail. It is a rather delicate matter to blow one's own horn effectively. There is always the danger of sounding too faint a note and of not being heard over the footlights; there is the opposite difficulty to avoid of turning on too much wind and of overdoing the job. How much to say


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 in one's own behalf and how much to omit calls for a rare judgment. I have often asked men who have come to me for letters of recommendation to write out what they honestly thought could be said in commendation of themselves; but I have seldom had anyone who did it well. One man only I recall who wrote a discriminating and satisfactory letter about himself that I would have been willing to sign my name to and send out in the mails.

Frankness is a good quality to reveal. If you have been well trained, if you have had some experience in the work which you are wanting to take up, if you are willing to work hard and to rest your advancement upon your ability to do the business, these are good things to say, and they are likely to make a fair impression upon the man who reads your letter. Most men who apply for a position offer little and ask a good deal. When you suggest, as they do in advertisements, that you are willing to rest your case upon your merits, that "the goods may be returned if not satisfactory," you reveal a certain confidence and belief in your own powers and ability that will be sure to make an


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 appeal. A reasonable confidence in yourself begets confidence on the part of others. If you have letters of recommendation it is well to enclose these, but it is better still to give references, since the letters that are enclosed, and which you have yourself seen, must of necessity be less frank and more guarded in their statements than one which is written directly to the employer concerned. Even though he tells the truth about you, the writer of a letter will do it in a very different way from what he would if he were sure you would never see the letter.

The mechanical construction of the letter which you write and its appearance will have much to do in determining your success in winning attention and getting a job. Good form, legible penmanship, correct spelling and sentence structure all have weight in settling your fate. I have known more than one appointment to turn upon a superfluous period or a misplaced comma or a misspelled word. These all seem trifles, but when the race is close, then the decision goes to the man whose attention to small details has been most punctilious. The same suggestions as I


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 OUR FORTUNE.

honored member of the Legislature, as well as one of the largest cultivators in that distant State; but that their good-will was not ephe- neral, is evinced by an occasional letter glow- ing with warm wishes and tender memories, not to speak of the barrels of apples and hazel-nuts which come in to our children every autumn.

Then there was poor Fanny Lynne, the seam- stress, who lived a story higher, and who used to pant so as she came up the stairs. Poor thing! her unaided hand-to-hand struggle with poverty was so severe, that all thoughts, save of labor, seemed to be crushed out of her being, till at last the kind All-Father, who understands and pities these toiling Marthas, gently drew the work from her weary hands, and folding them in everlasting rest, took her to sit, like Mary, at his feet in the heavenly kingdom.

Besides these, there were Jones, the police- man, the widow Ray, and old Mr. and Mrs. Greenfield, an ancient couple, whose early days had been passed among the fresh pastures ‘and budding orchards of a country homestead, with a number of others. For the old house, which had once been a princely mansion, was large, and sheltered many under its dilapidated roof.

In the back buildings was a colony of profes- sional people, principally actors and musicians, whose noisy, Bohemian manners used to amuse me very much. But the person who interested me most, was an old gentleman who lived far up in the attic. I said gentleman, for though he might certainly have claimed the superlative of the word descriptive of us all, (shabby, ) there was about’ him that nameless air of gentility, which, like the perfume of roses, is never wholly lost. Who he was, and how he lived, were alike unknown; for he evaded all companionship, and, indeed, was seldom seen, save at nightfall, when he sometimes passed up and down with a covered basket in his hand.

Often in the twilight, taking Vivia in my arms, and going out on the landing to ‘look for my husband, I watched this odd creature flitting, shadow-like, through the gloaming till a strange, yearning pity for the lonely old man took possession of my heart. But nothing beyond a ourt “good-evening” could my most cordial greeting ever elicit.

It was to chance at last that I owed my close acquaintance. It was one evening when Harry was rather late in returning, and I had left the door open to light him up the stairs, that my mysterious neighbor appeared upon the threshold, asking: for a match, apologizing for the trouble by saying that he did not feel well enough to go out to buy any. I suppose it was the light that attracted him there, though it may have been my overtures of friendship; for I do not think a creature in the house, save my silly self, ever gave a thought to the unsocial attic lodger. He stood a moment looking into my humble room—humble, but bright as lamp and firelight, humming kettle, purring puss, and baby-laughter could make it; and if ever I saw hunger, bitter, heart-hunger, on a man’s face, it was then.

“Will you not come in?” I said. But my words, kindly as I meant them to be, only seemed to startle him to a sense of his occupa- tion; and, thanking me, he turned and hurried away with the desperate haste of a lost spirit fleeing from the gate of that Paradise it may never enter.

“Unpromising subject for a romance, Bess,” said Harry, at supper, when I was telling him about it. But then he always had a habit of teazing me about my ‘unaccountable fancies.” Subsequent events cured him of it.

Two days, three passed, without my seeing the old gentleman again, and I began to grow strangely uneasy. I remembered his having complained of illness, and imagination pictured him dying alone, and untended, in the dreary garret. By the fourth day my anxiety had be- come so intense that I resolved upon the bold course of going up to see him.

Wrapping baby in her little plaid shawl—for though spring had eome in name, it was cold in the passages—I began my journey toward the sky, that is, up the stairs. But ere I had as- cended the last flight a strange noise greeted me, growing louder and louder as I approached the old man’s room, whence it evidently issued. It was that kind of sound which people speak of as making their blood run cold. I dare say the excited state of my nerves was unfavorable to calm judgment, for to me it seemed that it could proceed from nothing human. Sharper and sharper it came. I stood irresolute, not knowing whether to advance or te beat a re- treat. But a spice of reckless daring—which, had I been a man, would, doubtless, have made me a pioneer, or a, freebooter—is inherent in my nature, and summoning. up this courage of desperation, I ventured closer,“and knocked boldly upon the door.

The rasping and scraping, ér whatever it was, ceased instantly, and a voice ‘within demaded,

“Who is there?”

“Mrs. Lawrence,” I answered; then thinking that he might not know my name, I added, ‘The lady on the second floor, from whom you borrowed some matches the other evening.”

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 have just given apply in a large degree to a reply to an advertisement for help. A good letter in this case is like a good front page in a newspaper or a pleasing personality in a first acquaintance.

There is another type of business letter which is so difficult to write courteously and in good temper that it usually proves too much for the inexperienced; that is the letter calling attention to an error and asking that it be corrected. There is usually the indication of annoyance in such a letter, and the imputation that, if the error was not intentional, it was at least the result of inexcusable carelessness. I recall a very distressing error which I made during the epidemic of influenza in 1918. It was my daily task among a thousand others to send letters and telegrams to the parents of our undergraduates who were seriously ill in order that the home folks should be kept informed as to their condition. Late one evening the head nurse at the hospital telephoned me that Robert Reed was seriously ill and that I should write his parents. I asked the office to look up Reed's home address and the name and address of his father, and I wrote


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 the letter. Then a few hours later I discovered that there were two Robert Reeds and that I had sent the disturbing letter to the wrong father. I hastily dispatched a telegram to the proper father and caught the other parents before they had time to get away from home. I had a letter from the first Mr. Reed in a few days which showed that he at least knew how gracefully to accept the correction of an error. He was so thankful, he said, to find by my second message that his son was quite well, that he willingly overlooked my mistake which he understood was, under the circumstances, quite an excusable one. I have always remembered him as one of the real gentlemen with whom I have had to do business.

One of the first things to keep in mind when a mistake has been made is that there is no likelihood of its having been intentionally made. Every one who makes mis' takes soon learns that he pays a heavy price usually for his error, so that he would rather be right than not. Any right-minded business man is willing at once to make his mistakes good, and usually all that is necessary is to put the fact


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 before him pleasantly, and he will do the rest. Unless we have never ourselves made mistakes we should not fly into a rage when other people do so.

In the writing of any sort of business letter, and there are a great many special kinds which I have not mentioned, we should be helped in determining what line of procedure to follow if, for a moment, we attempted to put ourselves into the position of the man to whom we are writing. It is largely a matter of psychology, of trying to understand how men's minds work, how they are most easily affected, what appeals to them most. If we would study ourselves more carefully we should know better how to appeal to other men, for in a very large degree we are all alike.


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When I was a young fellow, just, starting out into life, I came into daily contact with a man who had had a considerable experience with all sorts of people as a professional man and as a politician. He was shrewd, business-like, and, by those who did not know him very well, was considered cold and calculating—a man who would not be likely to do anything for a purely emotional reason; and yet from him I learned the effectiveness and influence of the letter of courtesy. I mean by this phrase the letter written not in reply to another letter nor yet to elicit a reply of any sort, but simply as an act of politeness and thoughtfulness to acknowledge a kindness or an obligation or to let one's friends or acquaintances know that one was aware of their sorrows and their successes, of their comings and goings, and that one had a real personal interest in these. It is the sort of letter that one is seldom under obligations to write, but if it is written at all it must be done at the opportune moment. Dawson never seemed to let a chance go by to write such a letter. If a


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 friend of his was elected to office or received any recognition or promotion for efficient service Dawson was the first to acknowledge the fact with a letter of congratulation. Marriages and births and anniversaries of all sorts never went unnoticed by him. It made little difference who the person concerned was; he might be the leading citizen or the son of a wash woman, but if he were in trouble, or had accomplished something creditable, or was in any way in the public eye, he was sure to get a line from Dawson written with his own hand on the beautiful stationery in the green ink which was with him a fad in correspondence.

When Ralph Roberts lost his life in a railroad accident, though Dawson was a thousand miles away and had really known the boy very slightly, he was the first to write the family and to express his sorrow at the son's unfortunate death; and I recall with what pride the father showed the letter to his friends and what comfort it brought to the broken mother. When George Mills won the two-mile race at the Western Conference Meet, Dawson was the first man to see the notice in a New


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 York paper and to write George a letter which gave him the greatest delight, and which he will keep among his treasures as long as he lives. I used to wonder often how he found time to do it, but when I spoke to him about the matter he said, "A man can always find time to do what he really wants to do, and nothing I do gives me more pleasure and satisfaction and influence, I suppose, than to write these letters. They bind me to the friends I have, and I know they make more friends for me."

Few of these letters were ever answered, for the letter of courtesy is the sort that people are glad to receive, that they intend to acknowledge, but seldom do. It took me a long time to reconcile these two facts. When I began to follow Dawson's example and write letters of congratulation and sympathy and encouragement to my friends I was disappointed when they did not reply and was about to conclude that the letters gave little pleasure and the effort of writing them was not worth while. One day a stranger from a little town a hundred miles or so away dropped into my office on a matter of business.


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 "I have heard a good deal about you," he said, "from a young fellow in my town by the name of Wrenn."

"What does Jennie have to say about me?" I asked, curious as we all are when our names are mentioned, and trying to recall what I had done to Wrenn.

"Well, you wrote him a letter once when he knocked a home run or won a foot race, or something of that sort, when he was in college, and he never tires of talking about you and of showing the letter to people in the town; and he says he wouldn't take a hundred dollars for it."

The boy had never indicated to me that my letter had brought him any pleasure. I would willingly write another for half of what he says he considers the first one worth, but I determined if such a little thing as writing a letter would bring a boy pleasure through so many years, I should continue the practice.

Another friend of mine, who has learned the importance and the possibilities of this sort of letter-writing, keeps his writing materials at hand in his study and makes it a point almost every morning before he goes to his office to write a


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 had abated, and I could move my limbs with more ease, yet the fear of futurity had weakened me so much, that I could not stir from my miserable couch; my misery was augmented by the troublesome officiousness of the old hag, who every instant came to torment me: One time she wanted to apply to my sores poultices of roasted flour, and at another she would make me swallow a spoonful of disgusting nauseous drops; now she would force down my throat a soup of a most uninviting appearance, and a few minutes after she brought straw, which was half rotten, to place it under my head; in short, she tormented me so much by plying me with her unwelcome officiousness and kindness, that the gloominess of my mind hourly increased, and my little remaining strength was entirely spent by my efforts to resist her torturing care for my health and ease.

On the fourth day of my confinement I was taken out of my dungeon, and my apprehensions were realized, The infernal villains


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 friendly or a complimentary note or two. If he has talked to a discouraged boy the day previous he tries to brace him up; if he has seen a loafer, he endeavors to stimulate him, and wherever he recognizes an opportunity for giving pleasure or comfort or helpful advice he seizes it and writes the effective word. He realizes, as not all of us have come to do, that the written word is more permanent in its effects than is the spoken word, for what is spoken we may forget when the sound is out of our ears, but whatever is written may be recalled to our memory at will.

I receive every Christmas a great many remembrances from the people I have met in various parts of the world, from the students whom, during the last twenty-five years, I have taught in the University, from young people whom I have encouraged or advised or disciplined or helped in some way, but I receive nothing that gives me so much pleasure as the unsolicited friendly note that stirs recollections and brings good wishes. And it is such an easy thing to write.

Lincoln knew the importance of such a letter, and he knew how to write it when


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 occasion demanded. His letter to Mrs. Bixby is one of the most dignified as well as tenderest in the English language.

Some letters of courtesy we are under obligations to write. A friend whom I


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 met yesterday in an unfamiliar city took me out to his house to dinner and spent half the afternoon in contributing to my comfort and pleasure. I should be crude indeed if when I arrived home I did not send him a note of thanks for his unselfish kindness. A group of young fellows sent me a box of flowers when I was ill a short time ago; I should be classed among the heathen and the barbarians if I did not, as soon as I was able, make some written acknowledgment of their thoughtfulness. Any personal attention or courtesy which we are shown, any special obligation which we may incur, we may well recognize and acknowledge in writing. If a friend gets us out of a hole or goes bail for us when we are in jail, the least we can do to show our gratitude is to thank him; and yet, as I now recall it, the last young fellow I saved from jail gave me the impression that he was doing me a personal favor by allowing me to assume the responsibility. I have heard from his parents, but from him I have never had a line. Too often this is the case, but it is really the man who neglects to write who in the end is the sufferer.


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 "I wonder if Fred will write us?" I queried one morning after a recent guest had left us. He was no special friend of ours, but we had taken him in and looked after him for a week when he was stopping in our town. He had had a good bed and better meals than I am accustomed to have when we are not entertaining company. He had sat by our cheerful open fire in the evenings and had his breakfast served in the morning when it pleased him to come down.

"Probably not," my wife answered, "they usually don't, and, besides, Fred is young and selfish."

I knew that he meant to write; I knew equally well that he knew he ought to write; but he didn't do it. We never had a word from him. I met him on the street a year later when I was in Kansas City.

"I shall never forget that good time you gave me when I was at your house a year ago," he said, "I meant to write to you, but—" It was the conventional reason, and I said nothing in reply.

Why don't people do it? As I have suggested in another chapter, some are ignorant, they have never been taught at


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 home or in the schools just how such things should be handled. Others are lazy and selfish. They have got out of the incident all of the personal pleasure or profit available, and they see no particular reason why they should put themselves to any trouble to acknowledge the courtesy or to give the other fellow pleasure. They are like the young man to whom I lent fifty dollars a few months ago to get him out of a financial embarrassment. He returned it long after the time agreed upon with the statement, "Well, here's your money; and if you knew how nearly I came to not paying it at all you'd think yourself lucky to get it." There was no gratitude on his part; he was rather disgruntled because he was expected to keep his obligation at all. There are those who procrastinate until the time is past when it is opportune to write such a note; and some have no facility in composition; they are so self-conscious and inexperienced as not to know just what to say, so they say nothing.

Such notes should always be informal; they are friendly and personal, and they should take on a friendly personal exte-


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 rior. This means that they should be written in longhand whenever time and circumstances will at all permit. The typewritten note inevitably suggests the turning out of quantities of notes of a similar character. I remember at a time of little leisure a few years ago dictating some personal notes to undergraduates whose excellent scholastic standing had warranted recognition. It was a case of doing it in this way or not doing it at all.

"I want to thank you," one of the men wrote me in acknowledging the note, "for the letter of congratulation which I received. Notwithstanding the fact that the writing of such notes is probably a matter of regular routine taken care of by the clerks in your office, yet I am pleased to be included in one of a small group which is worthy of special recognition."

He saw nothing personal or individual in my typewritten letter, though it was different from those sent to the other men, and I was not sure that I could blame him for so thinking. He saw it only as a form letter sent out whenever occasion warranted. I should have found time to write it by hand as I have since tried to do.


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 In other respects also the earmarks of a business letter should be eliminated in the note of courtesy. One of two forms may be used—a form used commonly in informal military correspondence or a still more informal form. The two illustrations below will make clear what I mean.


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 Usually in such a note as I have given above the street address is engraved upon the stationery and only the date need be written in; sometimes only the initials of the writer form a monogram at the top of the sheet. The writer's taste determines this. The second form of note omits the date and the written address at the beginning and starts with the complimentary introduction.


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 The opportunities for writing such letters are infinite and are limited only by one's time and inclination. If the tenor at church on Sunday morning sings an unusually appealing solo, if the minister's sermon goes home more directly than ordinarily, it is worth while to write them to that effect. When our friends have prospered, or accomplished something worth while, or have suffered reverses or experienced sorrow, it is quite fitting that we should recognize these facts. Joy and sorrow, success or failure, progress or decline—we share all of these things with our friends. Our joys are increased or our sorrows lessened as we recognize the fact that our friends know of them and care. We can often send a letter when it would be impossible or undesirable for us to say what we have in mind, and the letter is more permanent in its effects than the spoken words which we might utter. The sad truth is that most of us pat ourselves approvingly upon the back when we are discriminating enough to discover a weakness in what we have seen or heard. When there is something which can be criticized adversely or found fault with we jump at


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 it with alacrity, but when we meet something worthy of praise, we say nothing.

"I worked for a man fifteen years," a friend of mine said to me not long ago, "and I am sure I did good work. My employer would have admitted it had he been asked. Every few days during the time of my connection with him he pointed out to me my shortcomings and my mistakes, but only once during the entire time did he give me a word of praise or commendation. I came to know that if he said nothing he approved; if he could not approve I heard from him in no uncertain terms." It is a habit we have, even in our correspondence, of sending our flowers after our friends are dead. If we would only look around, if we were willing unselfishly to take the trouble, there are almost daily opportunities where these epistolary flowers might give encouragement and comfort and happiness to those who are still alive.

The effect of such letters upon those who receive them is not their only effect. Indirectly they influence the happiness and the success of the writer. First of all they bring him more friends, and help him


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 to hold those he already has. "If one would have friends, he must show himself friendly," is the substance of Bacon's statement, and its truth can be proved in the experience of all of us. Few of us have more friends than we need, and we can well afford to hold on to our present list and to develop as many new ones as possible. It takes a very little thing sometimes either to cement or to break a friendship that has no very strong bonds.

It is a good business proposition even if one is doing the thing from a purely selfish motive to write these letters of courtesy, for there is in it a personal touch that cannot help but make its appeal. Many of our everyday business deals are finally settled upon purely personal grounds. There are a half dozen stores in town which sell men's clothing, and there is little if any difference in the character of the goods they display. I do business with the one with whose proprietor I have the most intimate personal relations, the one who has shown me the most personal kindness, and who gives me the most careful personal attention. I am appealed to quite as much by the relationships which


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 have developed between us outside of his store as by those which are shown at the particular moment of doing business. The fact that he sends me a lithographed postal card when he is at Palm Beach or writes me a letter of congratulations on my birthday induces me indirectly to get a new spring suit at his establishment, and I do not believe that he intends this result at all when he takes the time to write me. But it is an evidence of good salesmanship whether it is practiced by the minister or the milkman. It develops one's sympathies, it widens one's interests, it robs one of selfishness and cultivates in one some of the social graces which might otherwise be lacking. It is a sort of humanizer, a broadening, refining influence which is good for every man.

These letters should not be long; they require no literary skill to make them effective. They should be direct, sincere, genuine; they should come from the heart; nothing would show so quickly as hypocrisy; nothing would be so ineffective as to overdo or exaggerate the feeling or the sentiments or the emotions expressed. The writer should say what he feels and feel


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 what he says. Unless he is genuinely himself, he will have failed.

A wealthy friend of mine was written a few years ago by a minister who wished to induce the zapitalist to give a certain sum of money toward the building of a church. My friend refused at first, but afterward made the gift through another channel. "Why did you refuse to give the money to Mr. Andrews?" I asked him one day, with some curiosity to understand his viewpoint. "The man tried to flatter me," was his reply. "He was not sincere; in order to influence me, he said things that were not true. I enjoy flattery, as every man does; but to be effective it must be skilfully done, and his work was crude."

I have lately been sending to a little girl of my acquaintance—she is nine years old, I think—the foreign stamps which correspondence brings to me. She is making a collection, and not infrequently I find one that she does not possess. It is very little trouble to me to slip the stamps into an envelope and address it to her. She wrote me a short time ago a very correct and a very proper letter for a young woman of


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 her age, or of any age for that matter, to write to a married man. It paid me a thousand times over for the effort it caused her to write the note, and besides, it gave her training in thoughtfulness and courtesy. I reproduce the letter here for the benefit of those who have had no experience and no training in this sort of correspondence and who may be induced themselves to try it some time in the future:

There is no other form of letter-writing that seems to me to hold so many possibilities, and there is no other form so little used. I commend it to you.


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text: When You Write a Letter

title: When You Write a Letter


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title: When You Write a Letter/Chapter 1


text: When You Write a Letter/Chapter 2

title: When You Write a Letter/Chapter 2


text: When You Write a Letter/Chapter 3

title: When You Write a Letter/Chapter 3


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 intending to make me one of their associates in wickedness, ordered me to mount a horse, and forced me to follow them in full speed through fields and forests, notwithstanding the weak state of my body. My conductors, at first only three in number, and clad in linen frocks, blackened with coal dust, rode a head, looking back now and then; their black faces and sooty hands evidently foreboded their dark design.

After half an hour's ride my infernal guides stopped at a lonely public house, alighted, and bade me take care of the horses until they should return.

I obeyed their stern command with gloomy silence, tied the horses to a tree, and sat myself down upon a bench before the house. The haunts of my disordered fancy made the time pass quickly on, I revolved in my afflicted mind my former occupation, the happy hours I had spent in the service of a kind indulgent master, and the horrors of my pre-


text: When You Write a Letter/Chapter 4

title: When You Write a Letter/Chapter 4


text: When You Write a Letter/Chapter 5

title: When You Write a Letter/Chapter 5


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title: When You Write a Letter/Chapter 6


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 440

OUR FORTUNE.

"Very well. I'll be there directly."

Then followed several minutes, wherein I could distinctly hear him crossing and recrossing the floor, lifting heavy articles and setting them down again; and when at last he opened the door, he was so evidently surprised, not to say displeased, at the interruption, that I grew painfully confused.

That he wished to hide his annoyance was, however, apparent from his greeting.

"You must excuse me, Mrs. Lawrence," he said, "for keeping you waiting so long. You were so kind as to invite me into your room the other evening; and I cannot do less than return the compliment, though my place is not very inviting."

There was an overstrained effort at politeness in his manner, that was far from placing me at my case.

“Thank you," I stammered. “I did not intend to come in; I only came up to inquire if you were ill, having missed seeing you for several days."

"You are very kind, I'm sure, " he replied, absently, as though but slowly comprehending the fact that any one could take so much trouble on his account. "But I have not been ill, that is, but slightly; only very busy."

But even as he spoke, as though in contradiction of his words, he grew giddy, and was forced to grasp the door-frame for support.

Setting baby down on the floor, I assisted him to cross the room to his bed, where he sunk down exhausted.

It was, as he had said, a poor room, containing nothing but a few articles of absolute necessity, no attempt at ornament, or even moderate comfort being visible. Directly in front of the single window stood a table, over which was thrown a checked cover, evidently with a view to concealing something hidden underneath. I felt morally certain that it had been placed there during the time that I was waiting at the door; and as I glanced at the curious shapes by which it was pushed up and bulged out in places, I shuddered, being equally well convinced that the horrible noise I had heard had proceeded thence.

I had, however, but a moment for inspection, for the old man reviving made light of his attack, said that he was subject to such turns, would be quite well presently, and begged that I should trouble myself no further. Seeing that my presence only irritated him, I withdrew. But when an hour later I ventured up with a cup of tea, he was still lying upon the bed; and even my imperfect knowledge of sickness taught me that he was in the grasp of fever. That was the commencement of a protracted illness. Vainly I besought him to let me send for a physician. He would not consent, nor was it necessary after the first few days, for the disease assumed that form which is so often brought on by overwork and excitement, and for which there are no better remedies than rest and care.

But how was he to have the latter? That was the question! When I asked if he had any friends to whom I could send, the bitter despair of his reply pained me beyond description.

“Not a soul upon God's earth who cares whether I live or die!" he said; and throwing his worn, old hands above his head, he looked at me with an expression of hopeless misery that I have never seen equaled.

Well, there was nothing else to be done. I must undertake it myself. The most I could do was but little; but I could not know of a fellow creature being in such distress under the same roof with me without trying to mitigate his sufferings.

I used to go up several times a day with little comforts, and while there perform some of the many offices necessary in a sick-room ; and though he always remonstrated against my attentions, and depreciated his need of them, I knew that my services would be missed if discontinued, and learned to wish for no sweeter reward than the glad smile which lighted the weary face on my entrance.

“Bess," said my husband, one evening, as I knelt before the grate, browning a piece of toast for my patient, “I don't half like your conduct toward that old coon up garret, and I wish you'd stop."

"Surely, Harry!" I exclaimed, letting the fork drop in astonishment, “surely, you don't begrudge that poor old creature a slice of bread now and then!"

“No!" thundered Harry, indignantly; “but what I do begrudge is, having you dancing attendance upon him as you do; for ought we know he may be a counterfeit, or worse. By your own admission there is something very mysterious about him ; and next thing you'll find yourself in a scrape that may be hard to get out of——"

“Oh, Harry!" I interrupted, “it is long since I have thought of him otherwise than as a poor and lonely, but harmless old man. Come up with me and see him for yourself. I'm sure you will be of my opinion."

Harry grumbled a little about having a wife who would make him drag up three pair of stairs; but he is naturally kind-hearted, and by

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82 one and I on the other. Now look all round you and see what you can see.

Cha. I see a large extent of land, and as it were a great lake all round it, and mountains and rivers bigger than Cocytus or Phlegethon,—and men,—oh! such little creatures! and some kind of hiding-places or burrows they have.

Merc. Those are cities, which you call burrows.

Cha. Do you know, Mercury, we seem to have done no good, after all, in moving Parnassus, and Œta, and these other mountains?

Merc. Why so?

Cha. Because I can see nothing distinctly from this height. I wanted not merely to see cities and hills, as one does in a picture, but men themselves, and what they do, and what they talk about,—as I did when you met me first and found me laughing; I had just been uncommonly amused at something.

Merc. And what was that, pray?

Cha. Some man had been invited by one of his friends to dinner, I conclude, for to-morrow. "I'll be sure to come," says he—and just as he was speaking, down comes a tile from the roof somehow, and kills him. So I laughed to think he couldn't keep his appointment. And now I think I had better get down again, that I may see and hear better.

Merc. Stay where you are. I've a remedy for this difficulty too, I can make you marvellously keen-sighted, by using a certain incantation from Homer, invented for this special purpose. The moment I say


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Rh the words, you'll find no more difficulty as to vision, but will see everything quite plain.

Cha. Say them, then.

Merc.

How now? Can you see belter?

Cha. Wonderful! Lynceus himself would be blind in comparison! Now explain things to me, and answer my questions. But first, would you like me to ask you a question out of Homer, that you may see I'm not quite ignorant of the great poet?

Merc. How come you to know anything about him,—a sailor like you, always at the oar?

Cha. Look here now,—that's very disrespectful to my craft. Why, when I carried him across after he was dead, I heard him rhapsodising all the way, and I remember some of it. A terrible storm we had that voyage, too. He began some chant of not very happy omen for seafaring folk,—how Neptune gathered the clouds, and troubled the sea—stirring it up with his trident, like a ladle—rousing all the winds and everything else. He so disturbed the water with his poetry, that all on a sudden we had a perfect tempest about us, and the boat was wellnigh overset. Well, then, he fell sick himself, and vomited up great part of his poem,—Scylla and Charybdis, and the Cyclops, and all. I had no great trouble in picking up a few scraps of the contents. So, as the poet has it,—


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66 newspapers would be full of the subject. Journalism would be conducted by the astronomers and nothing but the coming orb would be talked of; many would go mad from excitement. And when the celestial monster, moving aimless through space, should swim into the earth's attraction and go whirling in its new orbit how we should study it, attentive to its every visible aspect, alertly sensible to its changes and profoundly moved by the desolate sublimity of its stupendous scenery. For a half of every lunar month the churches, lyceums, theaters — all the places of instruction or amusement where people now assem- ble by artificial light would close at sunset and the whole population would take to the hills. Colleges, societies and clubs would be founded for the new knowledge; every human being, with opportunity and capacity, would become a specialist in selenography and selenology — a lunar expert, devoted to his science. Not to know all about the moon would be considered as discreditable as illiteracy is considered now. Well, the moon we have always with us, and not one man in a thousand nor one author in a hundred knows any more about it than that it is frequently invisible and commonly not round. On other subjects


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84

Merc. That's Milo of Crotona, the great wrestler. The Greeks are applauding him because he has just lifted a bull and is carrying it across the arena.

Cha. They'll have much better reason to applaud me, Mercury, when I get hold of Milo himself, as I shall do very shortly, and clap him on board my boat, when he comes down our way after having been thrown by that invincible wrestler, Death; no back-trick that he knows can manage him. He'll weep and groan then, we shall see, when he remembers all his laurels and triumphs; but now he is very proud because they all admire him for carrying the bull. Do you suppose, now, that man ever expects to die?

The visitor from the lower world, under Mercury's instruction, surveys many other scenes in human life. Space and Chronology are, of course, set entirely at defiance under the potent incantation which Mercury has borrowed from the poet—as they are, indeed, sometimes by poets themselves. He sees Cyrus planning his great expedition against Crœsus; overhears the latter monarch holding his celebrated conversation with Solon on the great question of human happiness; is shown the Scythian Tomyris on her white horse, the savage queen who is to give the Persian conqueror "his fill of blood." He sees the too fortunate Polycrates receiving back his lost ring from the fisherman, and learns from his guide (who has heard it as a secret


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Inishie no Nara no Miyako no Yaezakura Kyō kokonoe ni Nioi nuru kana.


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OUR FORTUNE. the time that I had my toast buttered and a cup of tea poured out, he was ready to accompany me upon my errand.

‘My customary tap was answered by cheerful “Come in;” and we were advancing into the room, when, catching sight of Harry, the old man sprung up in the bed with unlooked-for energy, and throwing out his hands, as though to ward off danger, exclaimed,

“Go back! Go away!” then turning to me, “Make him go! Ob! in pity, make him go!”

“Hospitable old party, I must say!” muttered Harry, while I hurried forward to soothe the sick man.

It's only my husband,” I said. “He came up to see you.”

“Oh! send him away! Send him away!" he continued to cry, the flush of excitement graw- ing deeper upon his withered face; and seeing that there was no use in trying to remonstrate, urged Harry to go down.

«It's the fever, you know," I whispered. ought to have prepared him for your coming; and gently closing the door after him, I re- turned to the bedside to try, by cheerful sym- pathy, to undo the evil which I feared would result from my thoughtlessness.

Going down stairs a few minutes later, I found baby still asleep, and Harry pacing the floor in no enviable mood. He came forward as I entered, and placed his hands upon my shoulders.

“Now, Bessie,” he said, gravely, “this thing!

depression of that fall and winter, will understand how fruitless were his best endeavors, and how our hearts grew gradually sicker and sicker under the blighting shadow of bope deferred.

It pains me even yet when I think of the evenings when he used to come home, foot-sore and worn with fatigue, from his useless jour- neyings in search of work. Unused as he was to much bodily exertion, this protracted exer- cise told upon his health return, he waa never too tired to have a romp with Vivia, and merry words, with prophesies of better luck on the morrow, for me. I knew that this cheerfulness was only assumed for my sake, that grim despair was beginning to tug at his heart-strings.

It wae o long, weary autumn to us. I had been raised in the country, and as imagination pictured the abundance there at that season— the ripened cornfields, where the great, yellow pumpkins lay like hugo bulls of gold, the mellow orchards, and the woods teeming with nuts —it seemed incredible that any of God’s crea- tures should want, But, alas! it wast fast be- coming so with us.

Meanwhile, the old attic-lodger pursued the even tenor of his way. Kind and polite when I chanced to meet him, but quiet and unobtrusive as ever. Of late I fancied that there had come to be a strange buoyancy in his step, and a light in his eye, such as we see in one who nears a longed-for goal; but I considered that it might be only in contrast to my own despondency. Occasionally he had slipped a quaintly-carved

and though, on his

has gone far enough. No honest man wont have acted in that way—and I am now fully ; convinced of what I was only suspicions hefore. } toy into Vivia's little hand when she happened therefore, lot this be the end of it. Understand {to be out in the ball; but ho setdom eame to me, Bessie, don’t you go up there again.” four room. Jt was, therefore, with some sur- J did go a few times, neverthelevs. T don’t ; priso thnt, hearing @ knock one dny, I epened hold up my disohedience as a precedent for! the door and found him atunding there, holding, others; but how enald [ forsake my old protege! a miniature wind-mill with gayly painted suils withoul @ word? Especially when he apologized | 1 bia band. with tears in his eyes for his rudeness ta my! ‘It's for baby,” he said, depreciatingly, husband. But I did not transgress very often, | glancing at my face. for my patient, who was already mending, grew $ I tried to thank him, but my voiee faited, for better fasts things resumed their former rou-' my heart was heavy within me. Things had tine, and before autimna we had trouble of our! deen gradually grawing worse with us, and own, Sonly that morning Marry and T had decided ed Te was not that [

The great mercantile honse, where Harry held ! that our bumble rooms must soon he exchang the position of book-keeper, was broken up by! for yet plaincr lodgings. the death of the head of the firm, and my hus-{ minded the change Ko much, for I knew thut it band was thereby thrown out of employment. } was not the surroundings. but the hearts within, At frst this did not seem anch o very heavy} thit made a home any place; but it was as the misfortune, for, with his good reputation and { first step downward that F dreaded it.

I think the old man understood my condition at once, for he came in, and gently closing the door behind him, walked over to the window.

�

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Rh from Clotho) the miserable end of the tyrant's prosperity. Then Mercury shows him the now desolate site of what once was Nineveh, and tells him how the great Babylon is fated to perish in like manner. As for the remains of Mycenæ, and Argos, and, above all, of the renowned Troy,—these Mercury is afraid to show his friend, lest when he returns to the Shades below he should strangle the poet for his exaggerations. The whole dialogue is very fine, and in a higher tone than is Lucian's wont to use, though no writer could use it with better effect.

Cha. Strange and multiform indeed is the crowd I see, and human life seems full of trouble. And their cities are like hives of bees, in which each has his own sting, and therewith attacks his neighbour; and some, like wasps, plunder and harry the weaker. But who are that crowd of shadows, invisible to them, who hover over their heads?

Merc. These, Charon, are Hope, and Fear, and Madness; and Lusts, and Desires, and Passions, and Hate, and suchlike. Of these, Folly mingles with the crowd below, and is, as one may say, their fellow-citizen. So also Hate, and Anger, and Jealousy, and Ignorance, and Distress, and Covetousness. But Fear and Hope hover above them; and the first, when she swoops down upon them, drives them out of their minds, and makes them cower and shudder; whilst Hope, still fluttering over them, the instant one thinks he has surely laid hold of her, flies up out of his reach, and leaves him balked and gaping, like Tantalus below,


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Ima wa tada Omoi-taenamu Tobakari wo Hitozute narade Iu yoshi mo gana.


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Asaborake Uji no kawagiri Tae-dae ni Araware wataru Seze no ajiro-gi.


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86 when the water flies his lips. Also, if you look close, you will see the Fates too hovering over them, each with her spindle, whence are drawn slender threads which are attached to all.

Charon compares human life to the bubbles which rise and float along the stream—some small, which quickly burst and disappear; some larger, which attract others in their course, and so grow larger still, but which soon break also in their turn, and vanish into nothing; and Mercury assures him that his comparison is quite as good as Homer's celebrated one of the leaves on the trees. It puzzles him also to discover what there is in this life so very desirable, that men should so take the loss of it to heart; and he would fain himself take a journey to earth, and preach wisdom to these miserable mortals, to warn them to "cease from vanity, and live with death ever before their eyes. 'O fools!' I would say to them, 'why are ye anxious about such little things? Cease from thus wearying yourselves; ye cannot live for eyer: none of those things ye so admire is everlasting, nor can a man carry aught of it away with him when he dies, but naked he must depart below; and house and lands and gold must change their master, and pass into other hands.

But all such preaching, Mercury assures him, would be in vain. Their ears are so fast stopped with error and ignorance, that no surgeon's instrument can bore them. What Lethe does for the dead, obstinacy does


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Urami wabi Hosanu sode dani Aru mono wo Koi ni kuchinamu Na koso oshikere.


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Morotomo ni Aware to omoe Yama zakura Hana yori hoka ni Shiru hito mo nashi.


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Haru no yo no Yume bakari naru Te-makura ni Kainaku tatan Na koso oshi kere.