Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/40

 sarcasm is harmless, without evil intention or guile, but concealed within it is the deadly poison and the sting. It is really meant to hurt. It is weak to show anger because the angry man has for the moment lost control of himself; he admits that he has not the physical strength of self-mastery and such weakness is ordinarily pitiable. The angry man must ultimately apologize for his weakness or leave himself permanently in a bad light, and he is often too weak to apologize.

Not long ago a young sophomore brought me a letter which he had just received from his father. The boy had failed in a part of his college work, and a notice of the fact had gone to the father, who received it, I presume, in his morning mail. The disappointment and the disgrace of it angered him, for he knew that the boy was quite capable of doing his work well, and he yielded weakly to the impulse of the moment and wrote his son and mailed the letter without reading it, perhaps, and certainly without giving any considerate thought to what he had written. It was a cruel, scathing letter that any father should have been ashamed