There is nothing so annoying as being obliged to write letters when you do not feel inclined. It is a great art, this letter writing, and very few possess it. People often think they do, and they write for writing's sake; but these letters are most wearying to read. Between every line you seem to see the words, "Is not this a charming letter?" and in reality you are so bored it is all you can do to reach the end. Then those dreadful persons who "cross and recross" their epistles in every direction! Paper is not so dear but that they could at least afford a fly-leaf. They defeat their own ends, too, for their letters are never legible, and they have to write again to explain their meaning, thus paying another penny away in postage.
Why do we not make a stand against the old forms? Why should we always tread in the footmarks of our ancestors, instead of making tracks of our own? "Dear Mr. So-and-So," we write to a man almost a stranger to us. Imagine his surprise if we addressed him so to his face! And we end in just such a foolish and unreasonable way, "Yours obediently, faithfully, truly!" Where is the sense? Your signature should be quite enough. You have to be so careful, too, in saying whether you are obedient, faithful, or affectionate to your correspondent. If you end too warmly, by mistake, the whole letter has to be written again. It is not a thing you can scratch out or correct. It would look so very bad.
People have different ideas of "Christmasing." Some prefer to adopt an unsteady gait, and to spend the night in a ditch or a police-station; some have a taste for family parties; some like it better by themselves, and some go right away and spend the time at a different place every year. These last are, I think, by far the most sensible. It is a mistake to have land-marks to remind you how time is running on, how friends have left, how the loved ones have passed away. The vacant place appears even more empty. The old happy times show out even happier in contrast to the present. You cannot enjoy yourself or forget the past, for
"A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."
It is far better to go away somewhere to places which recall no sorrows or recollections and have no associations with the years gone by.
He is growing such a foolish old man is Father Christmas. He rarely visits us now with hoary head, his garments sparkling with frost and snow. He is tired of all that. He likes a change of fashion, like everybody else. He either comes so thickly enveloped in yellow fog that you can scarcely distinguish the old man, or else he arrives so drenched with rain and splashed up to the beard in mud that we scarcely like to open our doors to him.
He is growing old, I suppose, and trembling on the brink of second childhood, so we must not blame him. But still he is not a very great favorite of mine, and I cannot refrain from echoing the complaint in one of the comic papers—"Why doesn't he strike, like the rest?"