Etiquette by Emily Post (thriller novels to read txt) 📕

"Luncheon was announced half a page ago! So good-by, dear Mary, for to-day."

The close of a less intimate letter, like taking leave of a visitor in your drawing-room, is necessarily more ceremonious. And the "ceremonious close" presents to most people the greatest difficulty in letter-writing.

It is really quite simple, if you realize that the aim of the closing paragraph is merely to bring in a personal hyphen between the person writing and the person written to.

"The mountains were beautiful at sunset." It is a bad closing sentence because "the mountains" have nothing personal to either of you. But if you can add "—they reminded me of the time we were in Colorado together," or "—how different from our wide prairies at home," you have crossed a bridge, as it were.

Or:

"We have had a wonderful trip, but I do miss you all at home, and long to hear from you soon again."

Or (from one at home):

"Your closed house makes me very lonely to pass. I do hope you are coming back soon."

Sometimes an ending falls naturally into a sentence that ends with your signature. "If I could look up now and see you coming into the room, there would be no happier woman in the whole State than

Your devoted mother."

Letters No One Cares To Read

Letters Of Calamity

First and foremost in the category of letters that no one can possibly receive with pleasure might be put the "letter of calamity," the letter of gloomy apprehension, the letter filled with petty annoyances. Less disturbing to receive but far from enjoyable are such letters as "the blank," the "meandering," the "letter of the capital I," the "plaintive," the "apologetic." There is scarcely any one who has not one or more relatives or friends whose letters belong in one of these classes.

Even in so personal a matter as the letter to an absent member of one's immediate family, it should be borne in mind, not to write needlessly of misfortune or unhappiness. To hear from those we love how ill or unhappy they are, is to have our distress intensified in direct proportion to the number of miles by which we are separated from them. This last example, however, has nothing in common with the choosing of calamity and gloom as a subject of welcome tidings in ordinary correspondence.

The chronic calamity writers seem to wait until the skies are darkest, and then, rushing to their desk, luxuriate in pouring all their troubles and fears of troubles out on paper to their friends.

Letters Of Gloomy Apprehension

"My little Betty ["My little" adds to the pathos much more than saying merely "Betty"] has been feeling miserable for several days. I am worried to death about her, as there are so many sudden cases of typhoid and appendicitis. The doctor says the symptoms are not at all alarming as yet, but doctors see so much of illness and death, they don't seem to appreciate what anxiety means to a mother," etc.

Another writes: "The times seem to be getting worse and worse. I always said we would have to go through a long night before any chance of daylight. You can mark my words, the night of bad times isn't much more than begun."

Or, "I have scarcely slept for nights, worrying about whether Junior has passed his examinations or not."

Letters Of Petty Misfortunes

Other perfectly well-meaning friends fancy they are giving pleasure when they write such "news" as: "My cook has been sick for the past ten days," and follow this with a page or two descriptive of her ailments; or, "I have a slight cough. I think I must have caught it yesterday when I went out in the rain without rubbers"; or, "The children have not been doing as well in their lessons this week as last. Johnny's arithmetic marks were dreadful and Katie got an E in spelling and an F in geography." Her husband and her mother would be interested in the children's weekly reports, and her own slight cough, but no one else. How could they be?

If the writers of all such letters would merely read over what they have written, and ask themselves if they could find pleasure in receiving messages of like manner and matter, perhaps they might begin to do a little thinking, and break the habit of cataleptic unthinkingness that seemingly descends upon them as soon as they are seated at their desk.

The Blank

The writer of the "blank" letter begins fluently with the date and "Dear Mary," and then sits and chews his penholder or makes little dots and squares and circles on the blotter-utterly unable to attack the cold, forbidding blankness of that first page. Mentally, he seems to say: "Well, here I am—and now what?" He has not an idea! He can never find anything of sufficient importance to write about. A murder next door, a house burned to the ground, a burglary or an elopement could alone furnish material; and that, too, would be finished off in a brief sentence stating the bare fact.

A person whose life is a revolving wheel of routine may have really very little to say, but a letter does not have to be long to be welcome—it can be very good indeed if it has a message that seems to have been spoken.