Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/158

 have just given apply in a large degree to a reply to an advertisement for help. A good letter in this case is like a good front page in a newspaper or a pleasing personality in a first acquaintance.

There is another type of business letter which is so difficult to write courteously and in good temper that it usually proves too much for the inexperienced; that is the letter calling attention to an error and asking that it be corrected. There is usually the indication of annoyance in such a letter, and the imputation that, if the error was not intentional, it was at least the result of inexcusable carelessness. I recall a very distressing error which I made during the epidemic of influenza in 1918. It was my daily task among a thousand others to send letters and telegrams to the parents of our undergraduates who were seriously ill in order that the home folks should be kept informed as to their condition. Late one evening the head nurse at the hospital telephoned me that Robert Reed was seriously ill and that I should write his parents. I asked the office to look up Reed's home address and the name and address of his father, and I wrote