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 as the strong points of a person about whom he is writing.

I recall that I won the everlasting enmity of a young fellow at one time who got hold of a letter I had written about him in which I had said that he "lacked aggressiveness." The young man argued that if he asked me to write about him I was under obligations to say only such things as would help him to get the position he desired or would be complimentary or creditable to him. If I could not say these things, he felt that I should not write at all. He was on the whole a good man, but he could not see that a frank truthful presentation of his qualities was more likely to help him along than a flattering untruthful description. Which leads me to say also that a letter of recommendation is the property of the man to whom it is addressed. It is in the nature of a confidential statement from the writer to the one written to. It is discourtesy and a breach of confidence to put it, without the consent of the writer, into the hands of the one about whom it is written.

When I have a man recommended to me I want to know something of his train-