Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/93

 for a time as a subject to dwell upon in friendly correspondence, but we are all more or less the slaves of everyday routine; the day's work takes most of our time and thought, and before we have gone far in our friendly correspondence we begin to inquire, "What are you doing? Where are you going? What are you thinking about? What ambitions are stirring within you?" The main thing that interests us in our friends is the routine of their everyday life and thought.

A friend of mine not long ago read me a letter which she was about to send off to a mutual acquaintance. "You have told her nothing about yourself," I said, "and you haven't seen each other for years. She'll like what you have said, but she would much rather hear about you and your home and your children and your varied interests, than to read the impersonal details with which you have filled your letter."

"But it seems conceited to talk about oneself all the time," my friend replied. Well, so it may, but that is what our friends want unless it is for us to talk a little about themselves.