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Show EXCURSIONS 'IN CORRESPONDENCE By THOMAS ARKLE CLARK Deaa af Mea, University af IlliaeU. Everybody Writes Letter I HAVE alwsys been Interested In writing letten and In getting them. One of my diversions, full of exclte-. exclte-. tnent snd possibilities, when a a child I rode to the nearby towa on (i Saturday afternoons, wss to stand In ' ' the little stuffy congested poet office and watch the distributing of the mall. ff y 'Whenever through the grimy glass I ; ( could see Mr. Seymour, the fat post-v post-v master, shove something Into our mall box, my heart leaped, for there was . the possibility, not Imminent I con fess, that It might be a letter for me. I got letters at times from my cousins In Englaud, from my chum who had moved to Wichita, Kans., and "from a distant relative at Mlnonk, who ... always began hla letters! "I take my pen In hand (though It was often a pencil) to write yon these few Hues to let you know that we are all well and hope yon are the same." ' He told ms little, but there waa a thrill ' tn getting the letters. It was a real event to get a letter, It waa like going to the circus, or taking tak-ing girl to the Fourth of July celebration cele-bration In , Slink tirove. It waa a change from the dull routine of everyday every-day life, and I tried to learn how beat to make reply, . ' The first book I ever bouxht with ' 1 ' my own money was a sort of "Heady Letter Writer," a collection of forms supposed to Illustrate every known situation sit-uation Into which frail humanity could stumble, and to provide an ensy and . graceful way out. There were letters from a father to his daughter who had Just eloped, from a bachelor of mature ' - years making a proposal of marriage to t widow, from s merchant ordering barrel of salt from a wholesale 'bouse, bat none of the examples given seemed In any wsy to fit the condition In which I found myself. They were 'all formal, precise words; they made me feet as I ordinarily did when, after ihavlnf been barefoot and clothed In ocntr shirt nd a pair of overalls during dur-ing tho week, on Sunduy I put on fetovy stiff shoes snd my Sunday suit. They seemed to mo not letters for ordinary or-dinary folks, snd helped mo little. Every one writes letters these days no matter how Ignorant and Inexperienced Inexperi-enced ho Is, snd every one should know something about bow letters might best be written. There was s tetter In my mall this morning from a tramp, and one from a man of high political position. The tramp was on old friend of mine who had at one time worked for me, and now being tn . distress, wanted mo to lend him three dollars until better luck should come, and the governor waa also In distress and wanted me to vote for him In the coming election, and one letter was as Important to the writer as the ether. Twenty letters are written today where one was sent fifty years ago, and yet many people who should know, write very Ineffective letters. It has been my fortune, good or bad, for many years to have a wide range of correspondence, to learn through failure and success, some of the things that go to make np an Ineffective letter, let-ter, or to recognize one that hae In It qualities that are worth while. There are recognised ways of beginning be-ginning snd ending letters of various sorts, there are customs and conventions conven-tions recognised snd followed by peo- pie of standing snd position which we should all know and follow. The form and the arrangement of a letter counts for more than we sometimes think, snd tells more about the writer than he often suspects, just as a printed calling call-ing or business card rather than an engraved one marks the one who offers of-fers it as careless of form and convention. con-vention. There Is no reason why It should any more than there is logical reason for thinking that a man who oats with his knife rather than with his fork Is s boor, but It does. - The materials that 8 man uses In writing his letters, the way In which letters are folded and addressed, the promptness with which he answers them, the language that he uses ail these things count Immensely toward helping his letters to accomplish the 4 purpose for which they were Intended. knew a man once who lost an Important Im-portant appointment because he had In his letter of application a misplaced punctuation mark. There was another 'man applying for the Job, and his letter let-ter was correctly done, and because there seemed little difference In the training and the experience of the two men, the one who made no mistakes got the Job. In this short series of articles I am going to try to tell you something about the things to avoid In letter writing writ-ing and the things to give attention ta I am going to give you some illustra-. illustra-. tions of good letters find tell you many of the things whlcj I have found very much worth while during the years that I have been writing letters. lttS, by Waatrrn Newspaper Union) |