n the children's weekly
reports, and her own slight cough, but no one else. How could they be?

If the writers of all such letters would merely read over what they have
written, and ask themselves if they could find pleasure in receiving
messages of like manner and matter, perhaps they might begin to do a
little thinking, and break the habit of cataleptic unthinkingness that
seemingly descends upon them as soon as they are seated at their desk.

=THE BLANK=

The writer of the "blank" letter begins fluently with the date and "Dear
Mary," and then sits and chews his penholder or makes little dots and
squares and circles on the blotter-utterly unable to attack the cold,
forbidding blankness of that first page. Mentally, he seems to say: "Well,
here I am--and now what?" He has not an idea! He can never find anything
of sufficient importance to write about. A murder next door, a house
burned to the ground, a burglary or an elopement could alone furnish
material; and that, too, would be finished off in a brief sentence stating
the bare fact.

A person whose life is a revolving wheel of routine may have really very
little to say, but a letter does not have to be long to be welcome--it can
be very good indeed if it has a message that seems to have been spoken.

Dear Lucy:

"Life here is as dull as ever--duller if anything. Just the same
old things done in the same old way--not even a fire engine out
or a new face in town, but this is to show you that I am thinking
of you and longing to hear from you."

Or:
"I wish something really exciting would happen so that I might have
something with a little thrill in it to write you, but everything goes
on and on--if there were any check in its sameness, I think we'd all
land in a heap against the edge of the town."

=THE MEANDERING LETTER=

As its name implies, the meandering letter is one which dawdles through
disconnected subjects, like a trolley car gone down grade off the track,
through fences and fields and flower-beds indiscriminately. "Mrs. Blake's
cow died last week, the Governor and his wife were on the Reception
Committee; Mary Selfridge went to stay with her aunt in Riverview; I think
the new shade called Harding blue is perfectly hideous."

Another that is almost akin to it, runs glibly on, page after page of
meaningless repetition and detail. "I thought at first that I would get a
gray dress--I think gray is such a pretty c