Sickness and sorrow, too, and death, if spoken of reverently
and bravely, must not be denied a place. So we shall have a letter now
all grave, now all gay, but generally, if it be a good letter, part
grave, part gay, just as the mingled threads are clipped from the webs
of life.
That such a letter cannot be written with white gloves goes without
saying. The first requisite is freedom from stiffness. The realm of
good letters is a republic in which no man need lift his hat to
another. It is hail-fellow well met, or not met at all. So when the
humble address their superiors, or when children write to austere
grandfathers, they suffer from an awkwardness of mental attitude which
is the paralysis of all spontaneity. Before the indispensable ease can
exist, certain relations of equality must be established. But there
are some whose fountains of speech, in letters as in conversation, lie
forever above the line of perpetual snow. They never thaw out. Bound
by a sort of viscosity of spirits, that peculiar stamp of the
Anglo-Saxon temperament, they are incapable of getting their thoughts
and emotions under way; with the best will in the world, genuine
warmth of feeling, minds stocked with information on all subjects,
they are never fluent.
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