Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/34

 or weeks or months shall intervene between the exchange of communications. One of the dearest friends I have, from whom I am separated by a thousand miles, writes to me and I to him once a year. Neither expects more than this, and each looks forward to the annual letter with interest and pleasure. Ordinarily, however, a letter should be answered at once.

I heard a man say not long ago, a man, too, whose correspondence is large, that he regularly delayed answering letters because if one delayed he would find that many letters really answered themselves and so did not require a written reply. I was interested to note, however, that the top of his desk was always in a litter, that he could never find anything that he wanted, and that his drawers, when he opened them furtively, were crowded with a jumbled mess of papers. People complained often, also, that their communications to him were ignored, that their requests received no attention, and that his official business was in more or less of a tangle. He paid rather dearly, I am convinced, as every man does for delay and neglect in his correspondence.