ri, Cusano sul Seveso"; "Lady Alwin, Cragmere, Scotland,"
etc. The letter would begin, Dear Duke of Overthere (or Dear Duke), Dear
Princess, Dear Countess Aix, Dear Lady Alwin, Dear Sir Hubert, etc., and
close, "Sincerely," "Faithfully," or "Affectionately," as the case might
be.

Should an American have occasion to write to Royalty he would begin:
"Madam" (or Sir), and end: "I have the honor to remain, madam (or Sir),
your most obedient." ("Your most obedient servant" is a signature reserved
usually for our own President--or Vice-President.)

CHAPTER XXVIII

LONGER LETTERS

The art of general letter-writing in the present day is shrinking until
the letter threatens to become a telegram, a telephone message, a
post-card. Since the events of the day are transmitted in newspapers with
far greater accuracy, detail, and dispatch than they could be by the
single effort of even Voltaire himself, the circulation of general news,
which formed the chief reason for letters of the stage-coach and
sailing-vessel days, has no part in the correspondence of to-day.

Taking the contents of an average mail bag as sorted in a United States
post-office, about fifty per cent. is probably advertisement or appeal,
forty per cent. business, and scarcely ten per cent. personal letters and
invitations. Of course, love letters are probably as numerous as need be,
though the long distance telephone must have lowered the average of these,
too. Young girls write to each other, no doubt, much as they did in olden
times, and letters between young girls and young men flourish to-day like
unpulled weeds in a garden where weeds were formerly never allowed to
grow.

It is the letter from the friend in this city to the friend in that, or
from the traveling relative to the relative at home, that is gradually
dwindling. As for the letter which younger relatives dutifully used to
write--it has gone already with old-fashioned grace of speech and
deportment.

Still, people do write letters in this day and there are some who possess
the divinely flexible gift for a fresh turn of phrase, for delightful
keenness of observation. It may be, too, that in other days the average
writing was no better than the average of to-day. It is naturally the
letters of those who had unusual gifts which have been preserved all
these years, for the failures of a generation are made to die with it, and
only its successes survive.

The difference though, between le