DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
You are to write of some habit that is common and that is more or less annoying to well-bred people. Make your words, in mock seriousness, appear to defend the habit that you ridicule. Make your style of writing somewhat ponderous, as though you were writing with the utmost gravity, but be sure to write in such a way that your essay will convey your sense of the ridiculous. Let your whole essay so ridicule the annoying habit that you will tend to destroy it.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] From As We Were Saying, by Charles Dudley Warner. Copyright by Harper and Brothers.
[3] Drawer. The Editor's Drawer of Harper's Magazine for which Mr. Warner wrote many of his best essays.
THE MYSTERY OF AH SING
By ROBERT L. DUFFUS
An editorial writer for the New York Globe, to which, on October 5, 1921, he contributed the following humorous editorial article.
As we go about in daily life various people attract our attention; their peculiarities amuse us, and we make semi-humorous but kindly remarks concerning them. Such remarks are the germs of essays like the following.
In the essay, The Mystery of Ah Sing, there is humor but not a single unkind word. The essay makes us smile, but with sympathy and understanding. Such essays, trivial as they may be, are restful and pleasing.