The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1925-10-22

EXCURSIONS IN
CORRESPONDENCE
BY THOMAS ARKLE CLARK
Dean of Men, University of Illinois.
Women's Letters

easily, and in the case of social letters.
at least, more often. Men write on
anything that is at hand or do not
write at all, while women in general
are careful as to their stationery and
are more likely to know what is proper
and what is not.
women are more prompt In answer
ing letters than men because. perhaps.
they are naturally more conscientious
A still further reason, and possibly a
better one, is that women more often
have the materials at hand in a desk.
or a table drawer, or in some convent
ent place, where they can be easily
gotten at, and so there is not so much
fuss and litter. A man has no place to
&C when he wants to write a letter.
Nature Tor custom, is ito has not pro-
vided him with a lap, and the table
is generally cluttered up with some
thing else when he makes up his mind
to write. A wOman will write on her
lap or the window ledge.
Because they are more fluent in
speech than men, the letters of women
are usually longer than those of men.
They have less unity, are not so much
to the point; they wander more. In a
social or friendly letter there is no dis
advantage in this fact. When gossip or
neighborho0d news are the topics of
discussion, we like detail. The bald.
unamplifed statement is dull and
does not satisfy our curiosity. 1t
takes a woman to give all the interest
Ing details. No matter If she does wan
dnr nm H. -Iolo LIo1I- =. -
When it comes to business the mat
ter is different. Then we want to get
at the point as quickly as possible; we
want to know what it is all about
without dragging in extraneous and
unrelated matter. This is where the
woman falls down. She Is likely to tell
1t all from the creation to the end of
time, and when she has finished you
scratch your mead often and, like the
Frenchman, you ask yourself, "What
is it that it isl"
| have a case at hand now. From
what l can gather from the woman's
letter a young student has rented a :
room from her and agreed in writing
to pay 500 a month for it and keep it
for a half-year. He now declines to
stay, and she wishes my help in enforc-
ing the contract. She could tell it all
in three or four lines, and a man usu-
ally would do so. AS it is, she takes
eight closely written pages in which
she touches upon all the details of the
initial interview with her tenant; what
he said, and what she said, and what
She remarked at the time to her neigh
Dor, Mrs. Brown. She stresses her own
need, her husbands business inactivity,
the fact that it is the first (and | trust
the last) time she has ever had diff
Guilty of this sort, though she has rent
ed rooms since Columbus discovered
America. There is much more inter-
esting but wholly unrelated fact pre-
sented. What she really wants is for
me to ask the boy to liquidate at once.
l have tried to anaIyze the cause of
this prolixness in the correspondence
of women, for it is pretty general in
the women with whom l have business
OF social correspondence, no matter
what the education of the women con-
cerned may be, and l believe it can be
explained on the ground that she is
more emotional than men, more high
She feels injustice, or joy, or
grief, or business responsibility more
keenly than he does, and feeling it she
gives free expression to 1t, and so too
often misses the relative Importance of
what should go into her letter, and in
doing so writes an ineffective letter.
One of my old teachers of compost
ion used to say that when, in ~criticiz-
ny the themes of his students, he
could not think of any fitting comment
o write Upon the back of the paper, it
always safe to say, "Omit the first
l have sometimes felt that the
woman who writes the business letter
night often with profit omit the first
VIC pages.
Women more often than men reveal
heir characters in their letters. Their
come to the surface; then
uling passions show; their weaknesses
re more evident. Two letters are be-
ore me as l write. The one is hastily,
arelessly, sloppily done. The lines
eel %drunkenly across the page; there
re blOts scattered everywhere. 1t is
asy to see that the writer would be a
cor housekeeper, untidy in her dress,
one who let things run at loose
nds. The second letter is beautifully
one, careful, neat, well considered in
Il details. 1 can imagine how she
Doks; and l know her house is well
IN. She's the girl for me!
g 1925, by Western Newspaper Union)
M -