" If Darwin had been
talking face to face with Fox, he would doubtless have called him a
blooming blackguard outright.
A writer in a journal of psychology points out the strong psychic link
existing between a certain short expletive of condemnation and a
refractory collar-button. These words seem to come at times charged
with the very marrow of the mind, and, if the letters of a man who
occasionally indulges in them be wholly purged of them, the letters
lose one of their most distinctive characteristics. The point to be
made is, that the personal word is all-important, that till the fact
is related to the writer, it is dead. If we want news, we can consult
the dailies; but in letters facts are little, ideas about facts
everything. That is to say, all events, especially the more trifling,
should be shown through the colored glass of the writer's personality.
What concerns you is not what happened, but what relations the
happening bears to you and your correspondent.
When once the personal vein is struck, nothing is so easy as to find a
theme for a letter.
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