Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/101

 writing to a boy. I don't really know just what a jaguar is, but I know he is interesting and dangerous. Things mean more to a boy than do people. No one recognized this fact better than. Theodore Roosevelt, and he has utilized it to a most interesting degree in his letters to his children. It is about dogs and horses and bobcats and other delightful animals that he constantly writes. One becomes acquainted with his dogs as if they were people with human characteristics and human feelings. Turk, the bloodhound, and "the pig named Maude" who went about the camp picking up scraps, and Skip, and Jack, are all like characters in a story book. As we read on through the letters we look eagerly for the reappearance of the familiar names as, I am sure, the Roosevelt children did while they were waiting for the coming of their father's next letter.

Men in active life are usually interested in business and sports and sometimes in politics, and these things should be kept in mind when writing to them in a friendly way. Their own particular business interests them more than does any other man's.