"FAN MAIL"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 14, 16 July 1937, Page 14

"FAN MAIL"

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DEMOCRACY'S NEW PASTIME

BRITAIN'S LETTER WRITERS

Letter-writing has lately become the people's new pastime, states a writer in the "Manchester Guardian.", The Postmaster-General told us the other cUfy that last year we wrote eight hundred million letters. That is, each of. us wrote twenty, but as large numbers of us are too young, or too old, or too infirm, the rest of us write more than that.

There are millions of business letters: those queer communications which begin something like this: "Yours of even date to hand and contents noted," and end even more oddly, "Assuring you of our best attention to your esteemed commands." And for a long time some lucky people (other than typists) have even been paid to write letters. Beginning, perhaps, with the famous tramp who wrote: "Two years ago I

People begin early. Every collection must contain hundreds of letters begin-

ning: "I am only a little girl" (or "boy"). They go on to any age.- Old Miss Purkey. told us that when she heard the.Bishop broadcast the other evening she was so much horrified because he never mentioned the Cause of the Animals that she had. to write to him, and he sent her a very nice reply.

It is rarely, however, that anyone speaks of his pastime. It is a private matter between himself and the adored one, for most of the letters are tributes of admiration. There is one remarkable thing about all these letters. The writers may be schoolgirls, or schoolboys, or ordinary men and women living in little homes, without telephones or reference books. Some of them have never even seen a directory. Bui. that does not stop them for a single moment. They write their letter and post it, and it arrives. How do they know the address?

If a. cat may- look at a -king, then one member of a great democracy may write to . any other, and does. Speaking to the great- one face to face might be embarrassing, but there are no inhibitions about, writing to him, or htr. This new letter-writing habit of