PART III.

LETTER-WRITING.

CHAPTER X.

KINDS OF LETTERS.

The post is the grand connecting link of all transactions, of all negotiations. Those who are absent by its means become present; it is the consolation of life.-VOLTAIRE.

A Letter is a written communication from one person to another.

An early settler had occasion to send an Indian to a neighbor upon an errand, and scribbled his communication upon a chip. Observing that the neighbor upon looking at the chip knew the errand upon which the Indian was sent, the Indian regarded the chip with reverence, and thereafter wore it as an amulet, calling it "the talking chip."

A Circular Letter, under guise of a personal communication, is yet written avowedly for publication. Criticisms, editorial articles, even entire novels are sometimes written in the form of letters; but the letter proper is a communication intended only for the person or persons addressed.

---

Kinds of Letters. Letters are usually (1) of Friendship, (2) of Courtesy, (3) of Business, (4) to News

papers.

i. Letters of Friendship.-Few duties are more imperative than to send frequent letters to near kindred from whom we are separated. The ties of family are absolute; the son, the daughter, the sister, the brother, who are insensible to these ties, who do not recognize and accept them as binding, start in life with a serious defect in their natures, and with an almost insurmountable obstacle to the attainment of true manhood and womanhood. These relations are not only the first into which one enters, but they involve all that is fundamental in character. The circumstances are very rare that will excuse the young man or woman for any neglect of love and loyalty to parents and to brothers and sisters.

Yet as the members of a family separate to enter each his individual path in life, it too often happens that they grow away from one another. Each forms new associations, has new friends, new thoughts, new ideas. On special occasions the members of the family meet, are glad to see each other, enjoy one another so long as they feel interested in recalling old times or in satisfying their curiosity as to the material facts of each other's new surroundings. But when it comes to real conversation, to the interchange of predominant thoughts, to the real problems of the daily life of each, every meeting finds the play-fellows of boyhood more and more strangers in maturity. There remain respect, confidence, love which every year seems more and more traditional; but of the communion, the mutual help of those early days, less and less is left; the relation is rather of a tribe than of a family.

To some extent this mental separation is inevitable, 1nt it may be partly escaped by frequent and familiar correspondence. The boy at college who writes every week to his mother of all that has most interested him, will avoid some things that otherwise might make him reluctant to meet that mother's glance. The young man who has just come from a farm to the city, will seem less a stranger to his little brothers and sisters when he returns for vacation, and will find his interest in the familiar scenes of boyhood far less diminished, if his letters home have been regular and full

hearted. The members of an affectionate family, all of whom are good letter-writers, will never grow very far apart.

It is therefore important that the habit of interchanging letters when separated should be an early and an accepted one. The boy's first visit away from home should inspire his first letter home. The girl at school should look'upon every incident as an "item" for her next letter. When, one by one, the elder children leave their home altogether, it should be no slight element of their purposes for the future, that there shall be a weekly letter to the old folks at home.

This practice will naturally be extended to school-mates and other intimate friends. In youth the heart is exuberant, the senses are keen, the mind is active, and the hands are comparatively unoccupied. There are hours of musing, of contemplation, of reflection, of recalling events just past, when the enjoyment and the profit are doubled if one can share one's thoughts with an absent friend. If such a correspondence be frank, unassuming, and free from gushing sentimentality, it is an unsurpassed means of literary culture.

What to Write.-But what shall these letters contain? Verdant Green's friend Bouncer wrote regularly to his mother, and he wrote long letters, that contained a great deal of information. But his plan was to begin: "My dear mother, I hope you are well, as I am at this writing, and I should like a little money, as my expenses are very heavy. I will now resume my description of Oxford from the point where we last left off." Whereupon he proceeded to copy from the local guide-book as much as would fill the prescribed number of pages.

This style of composition was not fitted to promote a very confidential intimacy with his mother, or to lead on his part to any pronounced mental development; but after all it was a fair type of

much family correspondence. A letter which is half occupied with remarking that "I now take my pen in hand to write you a few words," and half with regretting that "I haven't any news to tell, but close, assuring you that I am well and hope this epistle will find you in the enjoyment of the same blessing," is not adapted to do much more than discharge a disagreeable duty in a disagreeable way. But surely members of the same family need never pad out four pages of commercial note with common-places.

The Great Mistake in writing friendly letters is to suppose that only the marvellous is worth writing about. It is the incidents of every-day life, the characteristic little acts and speeches of the members of the household, that one longs to hear about when away. The great events are told in the newspapers, but only the letter can so depict the minutiae of home-life as to put the reader back for the moment among the friends he has left behind.

"I am going to make a sort of promise to myself and to you," writes Mary Lamb to her that was afterward Mrs. Hazlitt, "that I will write you kind of journal-like letters of the daily what-we-do matters."

MY DEAR GIRLS:

SPECIMENS OF FAMILY LETTERS.

Samuel Johnson to his Younger Sisters.

June, 1843.

I am ready to cry at not hearing from you. What are you doing? Are you not going to let me into any of your little pleasures or plans? My heart bounds with yours in your pleasant hopes, and my eye will see all beautiful things as though it were yours. Do let the words you would speak in your happiest moments, in all their freshness and liveliness, take the form of letters, and pass into my heart as though I were with you. And so I am with you where you call me.

What shall I tell you of? Flowers, birds, woods, walks, true, loving, sincere books— what? They are all around me here, and they are so deep in my love, and you seem so present to me, that I cannot describe them for it seems as though you knew how they looked as well as I. Tell me how you imagine things look about me, Little Susan Rcomes to my room every now and then early in the morning, to get me to go to ride with her mother. But I must see you in a letter soon, or I shall be miserable.

Margaret Fuller Ossoli's Last Letter.

DEAR MOTHER:

FLORENCE, May 14, 1850.

I will believe I shall be welcome with my treasures-my husband and child. For me, I long so much to see you! Should anything hinder our meeting on earth, think of your daughter as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty, and who always cherished you, according as her mind opened to discover excellence.

Give dear love, too, to my brothers; and first, to my eldest, faithful friend, Eugene; a sister's love to Ellen; love to all my kind, good aunts, and to my dear consin EGod bless them!

I hope we shall be able to pass some time together, yet, in this world. But if God decrees otherwise—here and hereafter, my dearest mother,

Your loving child,

MARGARET.

William Henry to his Grandmother.

MY DEAR GRANDMOTHER:

I guess you'll think 'tis funny getting another letter again from me so soon, but I'm in a hurry to have my father send me some money to have my skates mended; ask him if he won't please to send me thirty-three cents; and we two have made up again, and I thought you would like to know. It had been most three days, and we hadn't been anywhere together, or spoken hardly, and I hadn't looked him in the eye, or he me. Old Monder Bry he wanted to keep round me all the time, and have double-runner together. He knew we two hadn't been such chums as we used to be, so he came up to me and said, "Billy, I think that Dorry's a mean sort of a chap, don't you?"

"No, I don't," I said; "he don't know what 'tis to be mean! " For I wasn't going to have him coming any Jersey over me!

"O, you needn't be so spunky about it!" says he,

"I ain't spunky!" says I.

Then I went into the school room to study over my Latin Grammar before school began, and sat down amongst the boys that were all crowding round the stove. And I was studying away, and didn't mind 'em fooling round me, for I'd lost one mark day before, and didn't mean to lose any more, for you know what my father promised me, if my next report improved much. And while I was sitting there, studying away, and drying my feet, for we'd been having darings, and W. B- he stumped me to jump on a place where 'twas cracking, and I went in over tops of boots and wet my feet sopping wet. And I didn't notice at first, for I wasn't looking round much, but looking straight down on my Latin Grammar, and didn't notice that 'most all the boys had gone out. Only about half a dozen left, and one of 'em was Dorry, and he sat to the right of me, about a yard off, studying his lesson. Then another boy went out, and then another, and by-and-by every one of them was gone, and left us two sitting there. O, we sat just as still! I kept my head down, and we made believe think of nothing but just the lesson. First thing I knew he moved, and I looked up, and there was Dorry looking me right in the eye! and held out his hand. "How are you, sweet William?" says he, and laughed some. Then I clapped my hand on his shoulder, “ Old Dorrymas, how are you?” says I. And so you see, we got over it then, right away.

Dorry says he wasn't asleep that morning when I stood there, only making believe. Said he wished I'd pull, then he was going to puil too; and wouldn't that been a funny way to make up, pulling hair? He's had a letter from Tom Cush, and he's got home, but is going away again, for he means to be a rezular sailor and get to be captain of a great ship. He's coming here next week. I hope you won't forget that thirty-three. I'd just