est, or change their conduct. We can make them happy, or drive them to despair. I had a letter only recently from an old friend of mine whom I had not seen or heard from since we were boys of eighteen. He had stumbled upon my name and picture in a magazine, and these had recalled to him, as his letter recalled to me, all our boyhood relationships. His letter brought back to me my youth with all the friends I had known, all the escapades of which I had been a part, all the subtle influences which had combined to form my character. The few sentences of his letter spread out before me again the whole panorama of my youth. A letter I received thirty-five years ago or more—a very commonplace letter it might have seemed to a casual reader—changed my whole future. It made me give up the work I was then engaged in and drove me to college. It stimulated me to study and gave me an ambition to see the world.
Writing letters is something more than merely putting one word after another upon paper. It is an art, and an art almost universally employed, which is well worth our study. To write letters well we must
