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 perhaps, but quite logical, quite free from malice and anger. It is a plan which has worked well for me and one that I submit for the sympathetic consideration of others. It gives me all the exhilaration and satisfaction of writing a letter that takes the skin off, and I am never humiliated by having to apologize for having done a thoughtless or ungentlemanly thing.

A letter of apology is a very difficult letter to write, and it is seldom done well. The most of such letters as I have seen have been done awkwardly, haltingly, with little genuineness and finesse. I presume the reason is that we write them because we ought to do it and not because we want to do it. Our parents or our wives or the Dean insists that it be done, and we yield with reservations. An acquaintance of mine has been waiting for weeks, I am convinced, in an attempt to get up his courage to write me a letter of apology for an asinine thing he said to me, but he isn't quite up to it. The letter will come in time, but it will be badly done; it will be an attempt to justify himself rather than a real apology; he will