“Miss Margaret Roe, etc., etc.
Dear Madam:
As a man who knows a good pipe from a bad one, will you grant us an opportunity to show you….”
Undoubtedly these charming highly imaginative specialists in advertising give great pleasure. But when business houses month after month send advertising letters which set forth the glories of something glaringly impossible of enjoyment by the person to whom the letter is addressed, then that person is likely to reflect that squandered postage, and inefficient management, must be paid for in the price or quality of the thing advertised.
The literary value of a personal form-letter is not affected, however, by the question of practical usefulness. Nothing could lessen my pleasure in a recent letter that shows me how I may realize the “chummy comradeship of Emerson’s nature poems,” and the “dainty art of Shelley and Keats.” The writer also tells me that he knows what my principal problem is. And the opening sentence of the same letter seems to explain why I enjoy all advertisements:
“To that ‘marvellous interestingness of life’ which Arnold Bennett says literature reflects, is due the fundamental liking for good reading of some kind….”
The Curse of Fall Elections
We have received the usual number of exhortations to do our duty in preparing for the fall elections. Thank you. We will do the best we can, but on account of the war we are already late in getting into the country for the summer, and our doctor orders us away as soon as we can go.
Many of the people who exercise any influence for good are gone already, while most of those whose influence is evil—who live by politics are here and will stay here or within easy reach, to attend to business.
Moreover all those whose laziness, incapacity and crankiness prevent their having money enough to get away—the whole Bolshevik crowd of socialists, synadicalists and anarchists, remain here under the influence of those who live by politics.
If there ever was an invention of the devil, it is fall elections.
Elections should be held early in April, before so many good people go away, and after they have had half the year at home to do their best in.