Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/163

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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