VII.

In a letter, the first word after the address should begin with a capital; this word is often printed, in order to save space, on the same line with the address, but should be written on the line below. In the address, Sir should always begin with a capital; and the weight of good usage favors Friend, Father, Brother, Sister, both as being titles of respect and as emphatic words, rather than friend, father, brother, sister, unless when the word occurs in the body of the letter. The affectionate or respectful phrase at the end of a letter should begin with a capital.

My dear Sir:

NEW YORK, 25 Jan., 1893.

Your esteemed favor of the 22d inst. gave me the most sensible pleasure. Your obedient servant,

A. B.

Mr. C. D., Boston.

My dear Friend,

SEPT. 29, 1892.

Your favor of August 1st has just come to hand. Whatever sweet things may be said of me, there are not less said of you.

Yours faithfully,

To the Editor of The Nation:

X. Y.

Sir: The "great mercy" in Ohio is doubtless a cause for great rejoicing on the part of all honest men.

L. H. B.

WEST S MASS., Oct. 16, 1892.

NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 1892.

The Honorable

and Others:

Gentlemen,-Your favor of the 26th instant is received, asking me to speak next Monday at Faneuil Hall upon the political issues of to-day. Thanking you for its courteous terms, I accept your invitation, and am S. L. W.

Very truly yours,

WEATHERSFIELD, 20 May, '93.

C. W.

I am here, my dear brother, having arrived last evening.

Affectionately yours,

It will be observed that in these examples the marks of punctuation between the address and the body of the letter differ. The comma is less formal than the colon, and the colon alone less formal than the dash with either comma or colon.

III.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXTRACTS

[From IRVING'S Oliver Goldsmith. New York: G. P. Putnam. 1851.] OLIVER GOLDSMITH was born on the 10th of November, 1728, at the hamlet of Pallas, or Pallasmore, county of Longford, in Ireland. He sprang from a respectable, but by no means a thrifty, stock. Some families seem to inherit kindliness and incompetency, and to hand down virtue and poverty from generation to generation. Such was the case with the Goldsmiths. "They were always," according to their own accounts, strange family; they rarely acted like other people; their hearts were in the right place, but their heads seemed to be doing anything but what they ought."-" They were remarkable," says another statement, "for their worth, but of no cleverness in the ways of the world." Oliver Goldsmith will be found faithfully to inherit the virtues and weaknesses of his

race.

a

[From R. W. EMERSON'S Society and Solitude. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1870.]

Next to the knowledge of the fact and its law is method, which constitutes the genius and efficiency of all remarkable men. A crowd of men go up to Faneuil Hall; they are all pretty well acquainted with the object of the meeting; they have all read the facts in the same newspapers. The orator possesses no information which his hearers have not; yet he teaches them to see the thing with his eyes. By the new placing, the circumstances acquire new solidity and worth. Every fact gains consequence by his naming it, and trifles become important. His expressions fix themselves in men's memories, and

fly from mouth to mouth. His mind has some new principle of order. Where he looks, all things fly into their places. What will he say next? Let this man speak, and this man only. [From GEORGE ELIOT's Middlemarch. William Blackwood & Sons: Edinburgh and London. 1871.]

This was the physiognomy of the drawing-room into which Lydgate was shown; and there were three ladies to receive him, who were also old-fashioned, and of a faded but genuine respectability: Mrs. Farebrother, the Vicar's white-haired mother, befrilled and kerchiefed with dainty cleanliness, upright, quick-eyed, and still under seventy; Miss Noble, her sister, a tiny old lady of meeker aspect, with frills and kerchief decidedly more worn and mended; and Miss Winifred Farebrother, the Vicar's elder sister, well-looking like himself, but nipped and subdued as single women are apt to be who spend their lives in uninterrupted subjection to their elders. Lydgate had not expected to see so quaint a group: knowing simply that Mr. Farebrother was a bachelor, he had thought of being ushered into a snuggery where the chief furniture would probably be books and collections of natural objects. The Vicar himself seemed to wear rather a changed aspect, as most men do when acquaintances made elsewhere see them for the first time in their own homes.

[From DANIEL WEBSTER'S Works. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1866.] Finally, Gentlemen, there was in the breast of Washington one sentiment so deeply felt, so constantly uppermost, that no proper occasion escaped without its utterance. From the letter which he signed in behalf of the Convention when the Constitution was sent out to the people, to the moment when he put his hand to that last paper in which he addressed his countrymen, the Union, the Union' was the great object of his thoughts. In that first letter he tells them that, to him and his brethren of the Convention, union appears to be the greatest interest of every true American; and in that last paper he conjures them to regard that unity of government which constitutes

1 See III. p. 352.

them one people as the very palladium of their prosperity and safety, and the security of liberty itself. He regarded the union' of these States less as one of our blessings, than as the great treasure - house which contained them all. Here, in his judgment, was the great magazine of all our means of prosperity; here, as he thought, and as every true American still thinks, are deposited all our animating prospects, all our solid hopes for future greatness. He has taught us to maintain this union, not by seeking to enlarge the powers of the government, on the one hand, nor by surrendering them, on the other; but by an administration of them at once firm and moderate, pursuing objects truly national, and carried on in a spirit of justice and equity. . . .

Gentlemen, I propose-"THE MEMORY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON."

[From J. S. MILL'S Dissertations and Discussions. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1873.]

Is there, then, no remedy? Are the decay of individual energy, the weakening of the influence of superior minds over the multitude, the growth of charlatanerie,' and the diminished efficacy of public opinion as a restraining power, are these the price we necessarily pay for the benefits of civilization? and can they only be avoided by checking the diffusion of knowledge, discouraging the spirit of combination, prohibiting improvements in the arts of life, and repressing the further increase of wealth and of production? Assuredly not. Those advantages which civilization cannot give-which in its uncorrected influence it has even a tendency to destroy-may yet coexist with civilization; and it is only when joined to civilization that they can produce their fairest fruits. All that we are in danger of losing we may preserve, all that we have lost we may regain, and bring to a perfection hitherto unknown; but not by slumbering, and leaving things to themselves, no more than by ridiculously trying our strength against their irre

1 See III. p. 352.

2 Charlatanry is the preferable form.