The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1916-07-28
The Detachable Season Of the Year
When EUerybody Looks Forpdrd
With Pleasure to "t1e Summer Post"
BY DOLLY pALRY MPLE
ETTERS are already beginning to
fro hat cities u

ETTERS are already beginning to
flutter to and fro between cities
A-A and vacation addresses; one
catches a post card glimpse of the turpu-
lent sea. amidst a business mans mail;
pictured ship comes sailing back
steered by the pilots hands from some
outbound voyager, although on account OF
Europes upturned conditions about the
war, fewer people are sailing away than
ever before, hence fewer post caro-
glipmses Of ships and more MADE in
America" cards.
Curiously odd stamps and foreign post
marks always have made their appeal
and they will be missed from this sum-
mer's post; for they always make CONT
mental letters distinctive, amidst heapeo
I'D domestic mail and through the pages
of descriptive letters one looks out upon
fresh green lanes of the red burdened
cherry trees of country farm houses;
business affairs wait-forgotten, whlle
the curious eye fingers upon descriptions
of summer seas or white capped mountain
peaks
1t is interesting now and then to eX-
change an actual and familiar personal
ity. for the problematical one concealed
in a letter; sometimes we live SO close
to persons in our daily intercourse that
we fail to see an unexplored. side OF their
nature. that is revealed only in their let
tiers.
often those who are feryent in their
speech and spontaneous in action ara"
a veil, as it were, over their mentality
-t.t ,,af "A nvf1rnGG6A
others little given to outward expression
in words, suddenly become eloquent Wheh
pen and paper become the medium
through which to express their thouShts'
OF course, these observations refer
mostly to love letters-the only klnd OIL
letters worth considering at all by some
people, business letters to a woman are
a horrid nuisance-unless they contain
a check, family letters are travelling
chronicles that one member of the house
hold forwards to another until every
BODY in the whole family connection is
informed of everybody else's state OF
health, mind and finances.
sympathetic or congratulatory letters
are merely tributes of friendly remem-
brance in woe or veal so that love let
tes constitute the only real thing IN
the matter of correspondence, and mucn
letters make otherwise grave days ana
long, lonesome days cheerful and toll
some hours gay.
On the whole the vacation letter has
a definite mission; they explain people to
one another husbands who have forgot
ten the thrill Of a love letter receive
some such charming little missives from
wives, whom they have thought more
absorbed in the babies than themselves
Wives-who often wonder if they are
still as fair in the eyes they love as
before they were married are suddenly
astonished by a gentle sweetheart letter
of the old-fashioned engagement day
type.
Yes the love letter is just the sort of
medicine needed for a depressed mind-it
goes to the spot-and why?
Because no man or woman can write
worth while love letter unless he or she
feels the affection of which the written
word is an outward and visible sign the
imita ton love letter rings as false as