at the top of the personal
letter paper are the following: a crest, monogram, or the separate
initials; the name of the home if, as an estate, it has a special
title; the name of the city and state; or the street address, with the
name of the city and state beneath.

When in mourning, it is customary to use a note paper and envelopes
surrounded with a narrow black border. The border should not exceed
three-eighths of an inch in width, and three-sixteenths of an inch
during the period of half mourning. Sometimes only a black line with
the monogram is used.

Scented note paper is not in good taste, except perhaps that which has
a very faint odor of violets or of orris root, or, in the Southland,
of orange blossoms.

_Ink_

Colored inks are not liked or approved of by society. A good
blue-black ink is the best for all writing.

Pale inks, too faint to be easily seen, and too lacking in stock to
last any length of time, are useless.

_Handwriting_

Illegibility in handwriting, or a stilted and difficult hand, is a
great waste of time and energy, mainly the would-be reader's. There is
no excuse, in these days of the typewriter and of common knowledge of
stenography, for an illegible letter or manuscript, and the
carelessness which writes too hurriedly to form the letters is
excusable only in the gravest emergency and between intimate friends,
where the inconvenience caused by it will be, for personal reasons,
gladly forgiven. Some handwritings which are thoroughly legible are
extremely tiring to the reader, and the simpler, less ornate hand is
for every purpose preferable.

The affectation of a handwriting which enables you to put but few
words on a page, is absurd and vulgar in the extreme. Yet, on the
other hand, a too delicate or minute hand is not desirable.
Legibility, neatness, and clearness are the salient virtues of a
letter.

The use of the typewriter is confined to business. It is still very
bad form to use it for personal letters; but should elegant script and
small, clear forms of type, such as are furnished by one or two of the
machines now on the market, be in common use, there is little doubt
but what the speed of service and the advantages of clearness would
bring the typewriter into use in intimate, and perhaps at last into
more formal, social correspondence. The tendency seems to lie in that
direction.

_Sealing, Stamping, and Directing Envelopes_

Neatness is especially necessary in