and whether he was worth
dealing with, or else it obtained to be filed up among such letters as
deserved no answer.

The same tradesman in London received by the post another letter, from a
young shopkeeper in the country, to the purpose following:--

'Being obliged, Sir, by my late master's decease, to enter immediately
upon his business, and consequently open my shop without coming up to
London to furnish myself with such goods as at present I want, I have
here sent you a small order, as underwritten. I hope you will think
yourself obliged to use me well, and particularly that the goods may be
good of the sorts, though I cannot be at London to look them out myself.
I have enclosed a bill of exchange for L75, on Messrs A.B. and Company,
payable to you, or your order, at one-and-twenty days' sight; be pleased
to get it accepted, and if the goods amount to more than that sum, I
shall, when I have your bill of parcels, send you the remainder. I
repeat my desire, that you will send me the goods well sorted, and well
chosen, and as cheap as possible, that I may be encouraged to a further
correspondence. I am, your humble servant,

C.K.'

This was writing like a man that understood what he was doing; and his
correspondent in London would presently say--'This young man writes like
a man of business; pray let us take care to use him well, for in all
probability he will be a very good chapman.'

The sum of the matter is this: a tradesman's letters should be plain,
concise, and to the purpose; no quaint expressions, no book-phrases, no
flourishes, and yet they must be full and sufficient to express what he
means, so as not to be doubtful, much less unintelligible. I can by no
means approve of studied abbreviations, and leaving out the needful
copulatives of speech in trading letters; they are to an extreme
affected; no beauty to the style, but, on the contrary, a deformity of
the grossest nature. They are affected to the last degree, and with this
aggravation, that it is an affectation of the grossest nature; for, in a
word, it is affecting to be thought a man of more than ordinary sense by
writing extraordinary nonsense; and affecting to be a man of business,
by giving orders and expressing your meaning in terms which a man of
business may not think himself bound by. For example, a tradesman at
Hull writes to his correspondent at London the following letter:--

'SIR, yours received, have at present little to reply. Last p