Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/169

 "I wonder if Fred will write us?" I queried one morning after a recent guest had left us. He was no special friend of ours, but we had taken him in and looked after him for a week when he was stopping in our town. He had had a good bed and better meals than I am accustomed to have when we are not entertaining company. He had sat by our cheerful open fire in the evenings and had his breakfast served in the morning when it pleased him to come down.

"Probably not," my wife answered, "they usually don't, and, besides, Fred is young and selfish."

I knew that he meant to write; I knew equally well that he knew he ought to write; but he didn't do it. We never had a word from him. I met him on the street a year later when I was in Kansas City.

"I shall never forget that good time you gave me when I was at your house a year ago," he said, "I meant to write to you, but—" It was the conventional reason, and I said nothing in reply.

Why don't people do it? As I have suggested in another chapter, some are ignorant, they have never been taught at