Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-11-24
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

of furbelows of current catches and
bright words.
Elaboration is one of the least I'M
derStood features of the art of letter
writing. 1t means not mere detail in
the telling of events, but the previous
searching out of all the details which
are interesting.
If any one believes this is an easy
task, he should read some of the old
letters he has written, when he will see
that he invariably left out many details
which he should have added and in
cluded a few, alas, which had no real
place in the missive.
This brings us to the one point OH
which most letter writer's fall down.
They do not sufficiently plan their let
ters Although they know better than
any one else the friend to whom they
are writing and just what interests
him when they. start to write, they
commonly forget his interests and stick
solely to their own.
This would not be so bad, since they
have many interests in common, II it
were not for the tendency on the part
of the average letter writer to forget
that the material of most personal mis-
Sives is trivial.
Trivia" a title given to a small book
of small essays, might well be used as
the descriptive of the average letter
written by friend to friend.
There is no reason to be ashamed of
this Who is there, reading some COL
lection of letters written by some IA
nous man, who has not felt that the
fellow had one eye on poSterityga and the
other on his pocketbook all the time ?
In other words, such letters" are
dishonest letters, because they kept in
mind the necessity for perusal by a
third party, or many third parties.
X
A truly good letter is so personal that
it must contain many trivial details
which will be of interest only to the
one who writes and the one who reads.
All good collections" tend to make the
right sort of reader somewhat ashamed
of himself for listening in" on what
he realizes was meant for just two hu-
MN eyes, and those two aSsuredly not
his own.
Trivialities will go a long way to
make ones letters interesting, and save
one from the necessity of striving for
effect. 1t is this same striving which
ruins so much good writing. How
unnecessary it is! All one has to do, es-
pecially the letter writer. who writes
solely for friendship, not for pay, is To
tell what has happened and what one
thinks, and let the result go forth
in the mails.
There need be, in letter. no rheto-
rical StrainingS, no series of questions
in the manner of the pompous sec
ondary school student who is trying
his best to initiate Cicero.
Happily, in letter writing one may
forget all that Shakespeare ever wrote,
and proceed to do nothing more serious
than honestly relate what has hap
pened in the interim, with ones per-
sonal reflections upon those happen
ings.
Later, If one happens to become a ia
nous man, these epistles, gathered by
some industrious hand, may strike pos
terity as the zenith of the art of letter
writing, and not because of their clev-
erness (Which is ephemeraD, nor for
their wit (Which is evaneScent), but
simply because they achieve what all
good writing achieves:
They say what the writer intended
them to say.
Only he who has served in some edi-
torial capacity fully understands how
much writing is written in which the
writer fails to say what he wanted to
say. He may think he is saying it-but
the reader thinks otherwise. Clarity,
clearness, honesty of expression-phraSe
it any way you like, 1t still remains
the same thing, one of the most desired
and least attained of all qualities of
good letter writing,