LETTERS TO NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES, ETC.
Another type of public correspondence is the letter which is intended for publication in some periodical. This is usually written by elderly gentlemen with whiskers and should be cast in the following form:
A Correct Letter from an Elderly Gentleman to the Editor of a Newspaper or Magazine
To the Editor:
SIR:
On February next, Deo volente, I shall have been a constant
reader of your worthy publication for forty-one years. I feel,
sir, that that record gives me the right ipso facto to offer my
humble criticism of a statement made in your November number by
that worthy critic of the drama, Mr. Heywood Broun. Humanum est
errare, and I am sure that Mr. Broun (with whom I have
unfortunately not the honour of an acquaintance) will forgive me
for calling his attention to what is indeed a serious, and I
might say, unbelievable, misstatement. In my younger days, now
long past, it was not considered infra dig for a critic to reply
to such letters as this, and I hope that Mr. Broun will deem this
epistle worthy of consideration, and recognize the justice of my
complaint.
I remember well a controversy that raged between critic and
public for many weeks in the days when Joe Jefferson was playing
Rip Van Winkle. Ah, sir, do you remember (but, of course, you
don’t) that entrance of Joe in the first act with his dog
Schneider? That was not my first play by many years, but I
believe that it is still my favorite. I think the first time I
ever attended a dramatic performance was in the winter of ’68
when I was a student at Harvard College. Five of us freshmen went
into the old Boston Museum to see Our American Cousin. Joe
Chappell was with us that night and the two Dawes boys and, I
think, Elmer Mitchell. One of the Dawes twins was, I believe,
afterwards prominent in the Hayes administration. There were many
men besides Will Dawes in that Harvard class who were heard from
in later years. Ed Twitchell for one, and “Sam” Caldwell, who was
one of the nominees for vice president in ’92. I sat next to Sam
in “Bull” Warren’s Greek class. There was one of the finest
scholars this country has ever produced—a stern taskmaster, and
a thorough gentleman. It would be well for this younger
generation if they could spend a few hours in that old classroom,
with “Bull” pacing up and down the aisle and all of us trembling
in our shoes. But Delenda est Carthago—fuit Ilium—Requiescat in
pace. I last saw “Bull” at our fifteenth reunion and we were all
just as afraid of him as in the old days at Hollis.
But I digress. Tempus fugit,—which reminds me of a story “Billy”
Hallowell once told at a meeting of the American Bar Association
in Minneapolis, in 1906. Hallowell was perhaps the most brilliant
after-dinner speaker I have ever heard—with the possible
exception of W. D. Evarts. I shall never forget the speech that
Evarts made during the second Blaine campaign.
But I digress. Your critic, Mr. Heywood Broun, says on page 33 of
the November issue of your worthy magazine that The Easiest Way is the father of all modern American tragedy. Sir, does Mr. Broun
forget that there once lived a man named William Shakespeare? Is
it possible to overlook such immortal tragedies as Hamlet and
Othello? I think not. Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum. Sincerely,
SHERWIN G. COLLINS.