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 interested to see what new method he will employ to get my trade. I am never fully prepared; he always surprises me; he is practically always too much for me. I think I have never been able to resist him but once. I am wondering now what strategic move he will make next year.

The same principle holds in writing business letters. In nothing else does originality, surprise, the unexpected count more toward bringing success, and in winning your correspondent over to your way of thinking. When you say what he expects you to say, you are dull, and he gives little attention to your line of talk; when you spring the unexpected he wakes up and finds some interest in what you have to say. We are all prepared to meet the conventional; it is only when the unexpected arises that we are taken off our guard.

The father of a student who had failed wrote me a year or two ago. He is a business man in a city of some size in a neighboring state, and though he seems to know business, he doesn't use the English language with the accurate care one might desire.