a very satisfactory letter, do you say? Perhaps not to you, but most
delightful and understandable to the little boy to whom it is written.
And if a little later you follow it with another containing one of the
kodak pictures of the cat, with "Tommy" written under it, accompanying
such a note as this, not only your little boy, but his teacher will
bless you:

"DEAR HARRY:

"Mamma is well. Papa is well. Mamma and Papa love you. Tommy loves
you, too. Tommy is the cat. Tommy wants to see you.

"Good-by. MAMMA."

I have written these two notes not as models to be copied, but to show
you how with a little thought and care you may ring the changes on
almost every sentence that your boy learns; and make use of every new
word, giving him a great deal of pleasure and helping to fix the phrases
in his mind and to make him realize that they are really valuable
additions to his means of communication. But I do not mean that you
should confine your letters entirely to words and sentences that the
child already knows. In fact, new expressions, if they are short and
simple, and if the main part of your letter is made up of things the
child understands at once, will add very much to the interest of your
letter. He will be eager to know what the strange words mean, and the
new nouns, verbs, and adjectives will go immediately to swell his
vocabulary.

Like any child just learning to talk, your little boy will at first use
nouns, when later he will use pronouns, so in your earliest letters to
him you will be surer of making yourself understood if you do the same.
Probably, too, with the exception of two or three sentences like "I am
well. I love you," you will notice that all his statements are written
in the past tense, and that will be a guide to you to confine your own
remarks to the past, for the most part, till you notice that he has
begun to use the future and the present himself. Watch his letters
carefully and adapt your own language forms to his.

There are two things that, as a general rule, I would advise you not to
write about, and these are any illnesses in the family and--that supreme
joy of school life--the box you are planning to send.

My reasons for this taboo are that even very little children are often
made unhappy and anxious, sometimes for days, if they know there is
sickness at home, while in the second place boxes are so often delayed
that they become the