It is said that the modern modes of communication, the telegraph, the telephone, the unpardonable post card, have caused or accompanied a decline in the art of letter writing. But the mail of the day has not yet been sorted; there may be great letter writers even now sending to their friends epistles that we shall some day wish to read in print. It hardly seems as if the world could be growing so unfriendly that it will let polite correspondence go the way of some other old-fashioned graces. Certainly the young man and the young woman can do nothing better for the pleasure of friends and family, and nothing better for their own self-cultivation, than to develop the habit of careful and courteous letter writing. Better than most school courses in literature and composition would be the daily practice of writing to some brother, sister or friend. One of the most remarkable young writers of the present day owes much of her purity of style, much of her education, to the practice of writing--no, of _rewriting_ letters to her many friends. Our friendly letters need not be stiff compositions written with the nose to the paper and the tongue squeezed painfully between the lips. But they should be written with care. A rewritten letter need not be an artificial thing. Why should we not take pains in phrasing a message to a friend? Neither sincerity nor “naturalness” enjoins us to send off the first blotted drafts of our communications, any more than freedom and “naturalness” oblige us to go out in public hastily dressed. Candor and spontaneity do not suffer from a care for our phrases and some thought in grooming our style.