The average sentimental girl can write a long letter with ease, and can write ill. In a long letter by such a girl which has been placed at my disposal, she constitutes herself petitioner for a poor family, of which she writes, "They are getting into despair as to how to meet their rent, much less food. It is a fearful idea of people in one's own class wanting for food." The sentiment of that is rather narrow, and the wording of it is execrable. Tact is not always but is sometimes denied to the young sentimental letter-writer. "I have been reading"--so wrote some little time ago a girl to a novelist--"your last book, and have fallen in love with you, and now the thought has come into my head, 'Could not I collect together my feeble attempts at writing and publish them?'" The writer who is informed that his work has suggested the collecting together of feeble attempts and publishing them is made the recipient of a dubious compliment. Very often the inducement to do a thing as set forth by the girl-sentimentalist is of a kind not calculated to weigh strongly with persons less sentimental. A lady of high accomplishments and keen relish of social intercourse asserts that while on the staff of a London High School she suffered for years from the invitations of young girls who, in imploring her to accept their family's hospitality, never failed to emphasise the fact that there would be "nobody else invited." There is a very general idea that the girl-sentimentalist totally ignores the practical side of life. That is not so. "I have a short wait here," so writes a girl from the Welsh border. "This letter is the last I shall write on English soil, and I want it to be to you. In spite of good resolutions, I have cried without ceasing since I left ---- Not even the evident amusement of a small boy, my _vis-a-vie_" (spelling is not a strong point with this writer) "could dry up those tears. Dignity doesn't help one to forget an aching heart. I must fly now to see to my luggage." The heart in a girl like that is balanced by the head, and the same thing is true of the girl-writer of the next letter-extract: "I look often at his picture upon my table, and wonder why it is there. I am so exquisitely happy, and yet so keenly aware of my own shortcomings. This great new thing that has come into my life makes me feel my own unworthiness. Tell me of all my misspellings, please." [Illustration: THIS GREAT NEW THING] The misspellings of the average girl-sentimentalist are legion; in fact, I have heard a schoolmistress say--the speech having been addressed by her to a younger schoolmistress--"Put down sentimentality; it leads to misspelling." From this schoolmistress I have it that the girl who can spell "parallel," "ridiculous," and "predilection," is rarely an incurable sentimentalist.