position, inasmuch as it calls for a careful statement of the proper public school policy; or that of prosecuting attorney or police judge, since the speaker must assume a definite attitude toward the question of law enforcement in disputed matters.

3. The congratulatory speech. In congratulating an individual or a group of successful fellow-students, one may dwell, first, on the difficulties which they have had to meet, secondly, on the skill and industry with which they have labored, and thirdly, on the significance and value which their success implies for the college and the community. In such a field as debating there is more to say in exposition of the unrecognized values of the contest than in athletics, or in non-competitive activities like musical and dramatic entertainments. This speech may well be enlivened by a little humor.

4. The anniversary speech. —Nothing new can be said by young speakers about Lincoln, or Washington, or the Civil War, or the Declaration of Independence. Yet one is loath to believe that the time has passed when it is good for young men to feel and express for themselves the deeper meanings of American history. The difficult thing is to feel for oneself that which has become hackneyed and stale through long years of insincere commemoration. Let a man turn to Lincoln's own letters and speeches during the darkest period of the Civil War; or glance through the library files of war-time newspapers; or look at war pictures in Harper's Weekly or the Photographic History of the Civil War. Let him read in one of the larger histories the unvarnished account of Washington's difficulties with bickering generals, unscrupulous politicians, bankrupt treasuries, and treachery among his own friends. Let him go to the armory or museum where the tattered battle flags are furled; or remember the "fading line of blue" that will soon march no longer through the warm May sunshine to the graves. Let him, if he would realize more fully what patriotism means, read here and there in Walt Whitman's Drum Taps, or "I hear America singing," or "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,"

or "By blue Ontario's shore." Then let him write his anniversary speech. It is a hard but a high task to interpret to a careless generation the great commonplaces that make America.

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5. The eulogistic speech. In striving to make a great man's life stand out in clear outline, one should seize upon a single dominant characteristic. Let it be the man's faith in his fellows, or his moral courage, or his zeal for truth, or his self-sacrifice. Biographical details are of importance only as they contribute to this end. Nothing is duller than a bare, brief, narrative recital of dates and deeds in a man's career, without any organization, any interpretation, any perspective. The question is, Why should this man's name be remembered and revered by those who know little of what he did? What does he stand for, apart from the petty circumstances of his career? Let his life interpret his spirit. Examples and anecdotes will then fall into place as explaining and reënforcing the man's intellectual or moral greatness. The eulogistic address tends to exaggeration. Let this be counteracted by comparison with still greater men in his own field, or with equals in other fields. Limitations are not to be concealed, nor are they to be emphasized. A calm, critical, cold-blooded estimate of a hero may be a very useful exercise in writing, but it is not a good subject for public speaking. Here the appeal is frankly to admiration, not blind, but whole-hearted and sincere.

Delivery of the speeches. These speeches should be written out for criticism as to substance and form. After revision the best of them, or all of them, should be delivered before the class. They should be five-minute speeches, six to seven hundred words in length. Inasmuch as the appeal in all is in some degree emotional as well as intellectual, the delivery should be more forcible, the gestures more numerous, than was possible in the purely expository speeches of Chapters I and II. Whether they should be completely memorized, or only assimilated by frequent private oral rehearsal, will depend on the aptitude of the student and the judgment of the instructor.

CHAPTER X

LETTER-WRITING

Anybody, it is supposed, can say what he means; and, in spite of their notorious experience to the contrary, people so continue to suppose. - STEVENSON.

THERE are two sorts of formal letters which every one has occasion to write: business or professional letters, and social notes of invitation, acceptance, regret, congratulation, acknowledgment, and the like. Experience has proved that many college freshmen have not learned from high school instruction or from observation how to write either business or social letters properly. The directions in Woolley's Handbook of Composition, Chapter IV, Rules 304-350, should be carefully studied and followed, not only in the practice letters written in this course, but in all regular correspondence.

Business letters. In business letters it is best to avoid all abbreviation, except of such words as Mr. and Mrs., spelling out the names of months and states, and such words as street, avenue, company. Figures, however, should always be used for the day of the month, the date of the year, and house numbers. It is an undesirable affectation to write dates entirely in words, as illustrated in the incorrect example in Woolley, Rule 311. Excessive abbreviation implies haste and carelessness, but the use of figures for dates is not abbreviation ; it is established usage. The only exception is in the case of formal engraved or written social invitations in the third person.

The inside address in a business letter, as indicated in Woolley, Rules 330-334, should include the complete name of the

person, firm, or company addressed, with the proper title before the name of a person, and the word Messrs. before the name of a firm; together with at least the name of the city of the addressee's residence, and preferably the street address. It is extremely crude to begin any kind of letter thus:

Mr. Andrew Jackson,

Dear Sir:

Another point in connection with the inside address in letters to individuals is that the first name or initials of the person addressed must always follow the title. To begin a letter Prof. Wilson,

Simpson University,

Dear Sir:

is inexcusable. If one does not know the initials, courtesy demands that a directory or catalogue be consulted in order to find them; unless, indeed, the acquaintance of the writer with the addressee, as pointed out in the next section, justifies the salutation My dear Professor Wilson, in which case the initials are of course not needed. They will, however, be needed for the outside address, in any case.

The salutation in letters to professional men. The salutations Dear Sir, Dear Madam, and Gentlemen are appropriate for all business letters. On the other hand, letters written to a professional man with whom one has even a slight acquaintance more often begin My dear Professor James, My dear Doctor Merriam, with the inside address transferred to the end of the letter, or omitted. Such letters as the following should begin in this way: letters to a college teacher in regard to college business; letters to a minister, physician, or lawyer with whom one has some acquaintance or official relation; letters even to strangers under such circumstances as arranging for a debate with another college, inviting judges, requesting literary contributions to college publications. These are all business letters in the sense that they deal with definite transactions and arrangements not of a social character; but

they rest upon a personal basis or relation which demands the less formal salutation. On the other hand, an athletic manager ordering goods for a team, a solicitor requesting advertising for a student publication, a student ordering books from a publisher, or applying for a summer position as canvasser, would of course begin with the complete inside address followed by Dear Sir or Gentlemen. The difference between the strictly commercial letter and the formal yet personal letter addressed to professional men is not easy to define precisely. Perhaps it will suffice to remember that one should use Dear Sir if a money consideration is the principal thing involved on the part of the addressee; and My dear Mr. . . . if the element of professional skill, courtesy, or accommodation is dominant.

Style in business letters. In the body of a business letter all the principles of exposition apply: unity, in that the paragraphing should show at a glance the several subjects or parts of a subject of which the letter treats; coherence, in that the order of words and phrases within the sentence, and of sentences within the paragraph, should be logical and clear; emphasis, in that the most important points should be dealt with in the emphatic positions, the beginning and the end, and with such fullness as may be necessary. In all these respects the modern practice of dictating letters to an amanuensis has caused a great deterioration in the business correspondence of all but the best firms and corporations. Dictation as a form of oral composition is the most important of all uses of English for the successful business man and for many professional men. For obvious reasons no practice in dictation can be given in college classes. Inasmuch as most college men have to write their own business letters for some years before they are able to employ a secretary, the best way to learn to dictate well is to write well.

Good arrangement of material. The secret of securing unity and coherence in a long business letter is to have clearly in mind the several points to be discussed, and to arrange them