There is a matter I would like to speak to you about. I realize, Mr. Johns, that I do not possess the education which you have. However, until your last letter I have always been able to read the writing. I do not think it was necessary then, nor will be in the future, to have your letters to me taken to the printers, and set up like a hand bill. I will be able to read your writing and am deeply chagrined to think you thought such a course necessary. Another story, of somewhat similar flavor, was told by William K. Jenne himself. On one occasion he planned to visit New York with his family and sent a typewritten letter, making a reservation, to one of the hotels. When he and his family reached the hotel, nothing was known of his application. Finally he asked them particularly about his letter and described the way it was written. The clerk then recalled such a communication, but he supposed it was a printed circular and had thrown it away. As a self-advertiser, the writing machine possessed some obvious advantages. The only trouble with this "curiosity breeder" in its early days was that it did not breed the kind of curiosity that translated itself into real buyer interest. The most curious were usually skeptical of the utility of the new machine. They objected to the fact that it wrote capitals only, and they could not assimilate the idea of paying $125 for a writing machine, when pens could be bought for a penny. This price question recalls the case of one of the early inventors, who might have won the honor of anticipating Sholes as the creator of the first practical typewriter, had he not become obsessed by one unfortunate idea. He believed that five dollars was about the limit that anyone would or should pay for a writing implement, and in the vain effort to produce such a machine he squandered a splendid inventive talent. The point that he overlooked was the actual value of the time and labor saved by the writing machine. The world today understands this point perfectly, but when we find this simple truth hidden even from an enthusiastic typewriter inventor, we must not be surprised that it was very little understood in the seventies of the last century. The marketers of the first typewriter soon discovered that they had undertaken something more than the sale of a new machine. Their real job was to sell a new idea, and to do this was a slow and toilsome work of education. No wonder the typewriter made such small and discouraging progress in its early years.