Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/178

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

what he says. Unless he is genuinely himself, he will have failed.

A wealthy friend of mine was written a few years ago by a minister who wished to induce the zapitalist to give a certain sum of money toward the building of a church. My friend refused at first, but afterward made the gift through another channel. "Why did you refuse to give the money to Mr. Andrews?" I asked him one day, with some curiosity to understand his viewpoint. "The man tried to flatter me," was his reply. "He was not sincere; in order to influence me, he said things that were not true. I enjoy flattery, as every man does; but to be effective it must be skilfully done, and his work was crude."

I have lately been sending to a little girl of my acquaintance—she is nine years old, I think—the foreign stamps which correspondence brings to me. She is making a collection, and not infrequently I find one that she does not possess. It is very little trouble to me to slip the stamps into an envelope and address it to her. She wrote me a short time ago a very correct and a very proper letter for a young woman of