Letters From A Railway Official
intended as personal and to be opened by him alone.
In all correspondence remember that a reprimand, expressed or implied, may be taken in a very different sense by the recipient from that intended by the sender. Your old dad has maintained satisfactory discipline among quite a bunch of men on more than one trunk line without ever writing a letter of reprimand or sending a hot message over the wire. The advice of the famous politician to walk ten miles to see a man rather than write him a letter is paraphrased for our business to mean rawhide yourself fifty or a hundred miles over the road to jack up a man rather than play him a tune on the typewriter. Another useful injunction is that of a famous soldier and diplomat, “Never underrate yourself in action; never overrate yourself in a report.”
Affectionately, your own
D. A. D.
55
