Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/44

 the other day," a boy wrote me—he really used a qualifying word before "fool" which I omit for the sake of appearances—"and I'm sorry. I hope the memory of the incident has not given you as much pain as it has given me. If you can overlook my discourtesy, I assure you that I shall not be guilty again. The fault was entirely mine." Nothing more needed to be said.

It is seldom safe to joke in a letter excepting with very intimate friends who know one's personal idiosyncrasies and mental habits. A joke is based most frequently upon exaggeration or upon an unexpected turn in the use of words or some deformity of speech, and we are looking for none of these in a letter from a stranger and seldom know what to make of them when we come across them in his letter. The effectiveness of humor depends so much more often than we think upon the unexpected emphasis we place upon words, upon the glance of the eye, the raising of the eyebrows, the intonation of the voice, the momentary hesitation before the last word. One may have all these in mind when he is writing a letter, but they are absent when the letter is read, and