This little volume is not to be a textbook; it is not even to be a "Ready Letter Writer" with illustrations of how to present an offer of marriage to a young woman, how to get a kitchen range from a mail-order house, or how to compose a letter that will have "pull" and get the big business. It is simply a friendly suggestive personal talk between you and me on the subject of writing letters of all sorts, good form and its importance, the effect of the unexpected, and the latent social and business possibilities of the art. I am going to tell you, in a very personal way, some of the things I have learned through thirty years of experience and observation in writing social and friendly and business letters to all sorts of men, in trying to teach high school students and college undergraduates how to write acceptable letters, and in waiting for months and years for the letter which was expected but which never came.
There was a time, not far beyond the memory of some who are still living, when letter-writing was a very precise art, prac-
