Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/102

 If you are writing to a farmer it is better to discuss crops and live stock and the prices of pork and other farm products than it is to ramble on concerning fashions and foulard, as if your friend were running a ladies' furnishing shop. His interests and tastes must always be considered. Women are fondest of personal gossip. They are more concerned with people than with things. Their time is taken up normally with the details of home life and association with their neighbors, and it is these that they dwell most upon in their letters. Intimate things are to them most interesting and most vital. Here is a Christmas letter, full of appreciation, cheerful, happy, and delightfully frank and personal. It makes one eager for the next one. It isn't written by Lamb or Stevenson or even by Charlotte Brontë, but just by a healthy, intelligent, friendly human being.

Dearest Alice:

I had your card this morning, and it was such a dear one that I came near shedding tears on my toast at the breakfast table. I am so sorry about