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Writing Letters.
II.
This series of articles on letter-writing is addressed to the Knights, but others may look over their shoulders and profit by the hints.
Use good stationery—that is, paper and envelopes of white or tint. Avoid gaudy designs. If you can afford an embossed monogram, have it small. If you have any printing at all on your paper have it embossed, preferably in dark blue, and modest, plain letters. But it is not at all necessary that stationery be embossed. Good form does not require it. What we urge you to avoid using are leaves torn from a memorandum-book, unsized paper that is made of straw, gaudy envelopes too large for the paper, and some firm's letter or note headings. Stationery is inexpensive. Better write only two letters a year and have them worthy of you than to write a hundred on ill-fitting and ill-finished paper.
When you begin a letter, do it with your street, number, city, and State. Then follow with the date. Have the last-named correct. Don't guess at it, and don't knowingly date your letters back, in order to make your correspondent think you have answered more promptly than you have. By such an act you utter an untruth. Besides, your deception is almost always seen and noted.
If you live in a small town, give the State. We receive many letters from people who do not observe this common-sense rule. We find your letter dated "Mount Vernon." The post-mark oh the envelope is indistinct. We look in the Postal Guide—an effort for you that you have no right to put your correspondent to, and one he might have been saved had you written your letter as you should have done—and there find twenty-four Mount Vernons! Then you wonder why you receive no reply!
If you live in a large city, give street and number every time you write. It does not matter if the postman lives next door to you and brings you everything directed to your name. How do your correspondents know that? We do not like to post a valuable letter addressed to "John Smith, Chicago, Ill." He may get it, but we have misgivings. And then, because you gave your address in one letter, don't say: "Oh, he knows where I live. I gave my address in my letter of last week." Yes, so you did, and the letter of last week is filed away where it will take trouble and time to find it, and get from it information that you ought to have given.