Evening star., 1914-04-26

IN these days of the telephone and the
1ettergram we hear frequent sigh for
those good old times when letter writing was
in fashion. 1t has in reality no more gone
out of style than has the habit of decrying
the is and praising the used to be.
For all the increase in the volume of
business correspondence, social letter writ
ing is still popular. Postage is cheaper, the
postal service better; so there is no longer
the need for extremely long letters that
tbe-e was when mails were few and far be-
tween. We may write as many letters and
as short ones as we wish without reproach-
ing ourselves for the undue waste of any
thing but time-unless, indeed, we feel as
Cicero did when he apologized for writing
long letter, because he had not time to
write short one! Good letters will always
be written by those who have the gift to do
it naturally or the patience to learn how.
Letters, more than any other kind of writ
ing, are a crystallization of personality:
@Foo1, look into your own heart and write!"
says Sir Philip Sidney But those of US
who are not born with this gift of personal
expression will have to learn its use. That
is what all the great letter writers of all
ages have done. Sir Richard Steele, who
wrote even more charmingly to his Prue
than he did to his public, gives us bit of
insight: @There IS no rule in the world for
what you speak face to face as you can"
MO closer, more warrl-hearted expression
~ of friendship can be found in all the let
ter files of the ages than Eugene Fields
words to Francis Wilson, sent with one of his
books, as related in that actors sympa-
thetic little study, @The Eugene Field l
Knew: II hope that you will live forever,
and 1 should like to live one day longer to
write your epitaph."
Nothing more playful is in any page of
the humorists than o. Henry's letters to his
little daughter, where he complains that he
has heard no news of Easter and the Rab-
bit eggs: HBut l suppose you have learned
by this time that eggs grow on egg plants
and are not laid by rabbits In one vol
une of the complete set of O. Henry's sto-
ries recently issued may be found many of
his characteristic letters kindly, humorous,
whimsical. Some of them are filed with
the kind of delicious foolery one sees in the
letters of Thackeray, where he sends his
wonted messages to the Brookfeld family,
but mentions the little girl of the household
in the minutest of handwriting.
No records of impressions, no essays nor
books of travel, that l have ever read sur
pass in interest or beauty of description the
yet unpublished letters of Lafcadio Hearn
to Alexander Hill, the Cincinnati bookman
and collector. No, when the people of to-
day have anything to say in letters, they
say it just as well as if they had lived in those
past ages which we have been accustomed
to regard as the great days of the letter as
literature.
Field, o. Henry, Hearn, and the other
men and women whose letters we are likely
to find published in the books and maga-
zines were professional literary people. But
so too were the great letter writers of the
past. Marquise de Sevigne and Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu are known to us only as
writers of letters; but are they any less
literary than dear old Charles Lamb, who
wrote up all his simple adventures to one
friend after another in his letters, and after
he had the incident expanded to his liking
made it into one of the Essays of Ella?
Or are these eminent Blue Stockings any
less letter writer's than DR.. Samuel Parr, of
whom nobody now ever hears? Surely
neither one of the ladies had the training
nor the practice of this well known scholar,
who gave so much time to his fourteen hum
dred correspondents that he had none left
for any other work!
THE letter was one of the earliest forms of
: literature; for even the primitive stage of
civilization feels the need of sending tidings
l