[Gutenberg 22222] • How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) / A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence

And perhaps this attitude of getting the thing over with at all costs is not so bad after all. There are those who lament the passing of the ceremonious letter and others who regret that the "literary" letter--the kind of letter that can be published--is no longer with us. But the old letter of ceremony was not really more useful than a powdered wig, and as for the sort of letter that delights the heart and lightens the labor of the biographer--well, that is still being written by the kind of person who can write it. It is better that a letter should be written because the writer has something to say than as a token of culture. Some of the letters of our dead great do too often remind us that they were not forgetful of posterity.