THE ART OF LETTER WRITING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 25, 30 January 1937, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE ART OF LETTER WRITING.

From the "Children's Newspaper" 'is taken the following account of letters of bygone ages and some of our own times. Long before Sir Rowland Hill gave 11s the penny post letters were carried to the ends of the earth. As far back as 2100 B.C. Hammurabi, King of Babylon, conducted his correspondence in a businesslike way, dictating to hi» secretaries, who wrote quickly on clay tablets. Having sprinkled the tablet with fine sand and addressed the clay envelope, the secretary gave the letter to a servant, who carried it to a furnace, where it was baked before bein;: dispatched. From the ruins of Pompeii comes a love letter on an ivory tablet: "Indeed thou art a pod to me. Thy beauty and strength have blotted from my eyes all other men. I am young, and the suitors I despise say that I am beautiful. I will wait, beloved, near the Temple of Isis." An odd find in Egypt was a letter a bor wrote to his father 17 centuries ago. It is scrawled on papyru-. and says boldly: ''Theonas to his father, greeting! If you won't take me to Alexandria with you I won't cat, I wont drink. There now. Farewell, Theonas." Charles Dickens makes Sam Weller say, "The great art o' letter writing is to make them wish there vo* more." Some of the most beautir.il letters in the world have been exceedingly brief; and we do not know one more tender than the lines Alexander Whyte wrote to the widow of Sir Thomas Clarke after hearing that her husband, his own very good friend, had died on Christmas Eve: "Dear Lady Clarke/' he wrote, "what a glorious morning this Is for Sir Thomas." The letters of Abraham Lincoln and Cromwell, of Sir Thomas More and the Earl of Chesterfield, of Gilbert White, the naturalist of Selborue, are among the world's priceless possessions. Captain Scott, penning his last brave letters before death overtook him in the Far South; Dr. Johnson, declining the patronage of one who would have smiled on him in the hour of his triumph; Mary Queen of Scots, sending secret letters which Elizabeth's Prime Minister intercepted—these are now part of our history. Chief among the world's letter writers w St. Paul, whose epistles, treasures of great price considered as literature alone, have shaped the thoughts and lives of men for nearly 1000 years. But the loveliest story we know of a postcard is of the one which brought joy to a dear old soul in a Poor Law institute. She had been there fifty years, and had never had anyone to see her, never the joy of receiving a letter. One day a postcard reached her from a nurse who was away on a holiday. Over and over asain the lonely old woman had it read to her. and as she lay in bed she kept it by her. When she died, three or four days later.; she was still clutching it in her hands: and they let her keep it when they buried her.