or sister at home.

4. If you have ever been abroad, describe in a letter some place of
interest that you have visited.

5. Write to a friend who is fond of camping, about your camping
experience.

6. Suppose your mother is away from home on a visit. Write her about the
home life.

7. Write to a friend, describing a party that you recently attended.

8. Suppose you have moved from one town to another. In a letter compare
the two towns.

+103. Adaptation to the Reader.+--The golden rule of letter writing is,
Adapt the letter to the reader. Although the letter is an expression of
yourself, yet it should be that kind of expression which shall most
interest and please your correspondent. In business letters the necessity
of brevity and clearness forces attention to the selection and arrangement
of details. In letters to members of the family or to intimate friends
we must include many very minor things, because we know that our
correspondent will be interested in them, but a rambling, disjointed
jumble of poorly selected and ill-arranged details becomes tedious. What
we should mention is determined by the interests of the readers, and the
successful letter writer will endeavor to know what they wish to have
mentioned. In writing letters to our friends we ought to show that
sympathetic interest in them and their affairs which we should have if we
were visiting with them. On occasion, our congratulations should be prompt
and sincere.

In reading letters we must not be hasty to take offense. Many good
friendships have been broken because some statement in a letter was
misconstrued. The written words convey a meaning very different from that
which would have been given by the spoken word, the tone of voice, the
smile, and the personal presence. So in our writing we must avoid
all that which even borders on complaint, or which may seem critical or
fault-finding to the most sensitive.

+104. Notes.+--Notes may be divided in a general way into two classes,
formal and informal. Formal notes include formal invitations, replies,
requests, and announcements. Informal notes include informal invitations
and replies, and also other short communications of a personal nature on
almost every possible subject.

+105. Formal Notes.+--A formal invitation is always written in the third
person. The lines may be of the same length, or they may be so arranged
that the lines shall be of different lengths, thus gi