How to write letters

It is not so long since most personal letters, after an extremely
formal salutation, began “I take my pen in hand.” We do not see
that so much nowadays, but the spirit lingers. Pick up the average
letter and you cannot fail to discover that the writer has grimly taken
his pen in hand and, filled with one thought, has attacked the paper.
That one thought is to get the thing over with.

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.

The average writer of a letter might well forget culture and
posterity and address himself to the task in hand, which, in other
than the most exceptional sort of letter, is to say what he has to say
in the shortest possible compass that will serve to convey the
thought or the information that he wants to hand on. For a letter is a
conveyance of thought; if it becomes a medium of expression it is
less a letter than a diary fragment.

Instructions

In Google drive, make sure you have the list view selected and not grid, then you can see the ebook extension you need. Epub works best for most cases. Here are brief instructions:

To Read on Android Phone:

• Download epub file to your PC
• Install Google Books on your Android phone: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.books&hl=en_US&gl=US
• Upload file on desktop to Google Play books: https://play.google.com/books

To Read on PC or Tablet:

• Download PDF and read with Acrobat Reader Free: