The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1918-07-27
WHAT TO WRITE TO
OUR SOLDIER BOYS
They Are Dependent Upon Comfort
and Cheer, and Missives Must Not
BE Gloomy.


ia his old age But the government
cannot write him letters. 1T takes the
home TO do that
SO a million or more Of Am rlcan
homes take their pen in hand says
the Boston Globe
The next minute We gnaw the end
Of the penhoidcr in perplexity What
to write. The censor might not APP
prove OF remarks about foreign pol
ltics or how the war appears to be
going. Yet the commonplace of every
day NE seem so trivial TO write to
man within the hearing OF the guns.
Every one Of us mast nave felt this
peTpleXity before beginning a letter
to the boys IN France--a kind OF din
dence. no matter how near and dear
they may be to us
The art of writing letters which will
satisfy a hungry heart is an art which
everybody can learn, for il has little
or nothing to do with 8 cling or
punctuation or literary style 1t is the
art OF sticking TO the commonplace de-
tails Of everyday life.
We all know the exasperated dis
appointment of receiving from per-
haps our dearest friend on earth the
scrt o. Letter Vhtch says that he is
very ou.r, things are gong tout as
usual. the wea.her Is .. ppy md he
expects TO reach Saint Louis on Tues
day-the Kind Of lclter that might be
from anybody TO any body--when all
the whole we are burning TO know
whom he met in Chicago, where he
stayed. and whether his indigestion is
on the mend.
What people want in letters--espe-
c!ally men in trenches 5000 miles
across the sea--is "A whif of home.
AID the way to send it is by writing
the simplest details OF the household
ana the village street. Picture the
reader Of your letter In a dugout or
prepped In bunk aboard some yes
sci tossing on the stormy Bay of Bis
cay. and ask yourself what he would
like TO hear Public news. General
topics, Abstract ideas, Not he.
lie wants to know how far up Main
street the paving has been finished,
and whether Hank johnson has in
and which field IS planted to rye and
which to oats; what the chances are
of the roam mare ever getting over
the distemper, and whether the kitch-
en- pump has lived down its bad habit
Of freezing in zero weather. He
wants to know in which corner of the
sitting room his mother has her sew
ing machine whether the plants in
the window box are blooming. and
what is the pattern of the new wall
paper in the dining room; whether
Bill Parsons ever returned that mon
key wrench he borrowed last July,
whether sisters beau has proposed or
/ enlisted, come across or gone across.
What he does not want to hear is a
ale of woe. lie cannot help il IL the
folks al home are sick and lonesome
and ii is selfish and cowardly to lay
these additional burdens on his spirits
unless there is something he can do to
relieve them. The Job of the letter
writer at home is TO keep a bright
cheerful blaze of the home fire burn
ing in the heart OF the boy at the
front. II there are any complaints
they are not in our letters from
| France, although the boys, we know,
are suffering hardships. No wife,
mother, sweetheart. father or friend
| could be so selfish as to write gloomy
| and respondent letters to the boys de-
! pending on them for comfort and
cheer.
1t Is the homely details In letter
| that brings our dear ones near to us.
| Just a phrase, reference to some ia
miliar stick of furniture, some shrub
In the dooryards. some venerable fam
| lily joke will whisk the Imagination
| thousands of miles back home across
| the sea, as the smell OF a remem bered
| perfume viii fash us back across the
years into some magic hour of our
| youth on the moonlit evening in a
rose garden. The homlier the details
the better. 1t is the commonplace
which make up most of our lives
| Home is signffed by an old haircloth
| sofa a red table cloth on the kitchen
table for Sunday night supper, a big
elm in the dooryard. or perhaps a
piece of one of mothers well-rem en-
bered dresses shipped off and folded
in the sheets of a letter. Give us the
commonplace and our memories and
imagination will do the rest.
To write good letters, nobody need
| be clever" Some of the greatest
novelists have been failures as letter
writers. Edmund Goose used to COM
plain that Robert Louis Stevenson s
letters to him would be fascinating
reading in a volume of the authors
collected works some day land they
are), but that they told him next to
nothing of, what he vented TO know
about Louis. Ibsen's, Meredith g, Haw-
thorne's letters are a let-down q after
THAR books. Tolstoys letters are often
! mparSonal essays. The reason the
! reasNn the three volumes OF George
| Eliots letters are so delightful Is that
there ia no literary sophistication in
them. They are such simple, straight
| forward messages. throbbing with hu-
man sympathies. which let US into the
! humdrum daily life of this woman of
genius, whose heart beat for all man
kind, For she who could write, in her
novels, Of the heroic passion could
write, in her letters, of mending and
| housecleaning OF headaches anc hot
| water bottles and flower gardens and
| the Unsatisfactory Free Press.