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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (May 25, 1902)
Mil'.MS VETERANS H m HCUE tlioy conic anJ there they go, di'hiiiti! all tht ttiennomi'toiB uiul what thvy Bay, dcHite the kiiowh unj Blccts of winter, Ui'tipliu tho ruaring, tearing, exuHperatlng Munb winds, despite the weurlnt'HB und the lunguur of th' long, long, weary, languuruuii August days; here they come and here they go, flitting In and out on tho wings of the United States mull as fresh and as wel come as If It never was cold or hot. Let ters, lettirs, letters each one freighted with the irystery of Its own message. And no mutter how many they come and how fas', uixl when und where, how and why, there's i.n ulways new Interest attached to the taking in of each letter, for there' always tho lutcnut of the mysterious un known about aiiy sealed letter. Here they lome, thero they go, letters, letters, letters cut h cue guarded hy Its door frail enough to open at a baby's touch, and strong as the mlKhl, the combined might of human law ami joctul honor. Ami of all the small means we have of Judging our fellow men and women, their habits, their tastes, their characteristics, t tit lr culture, theirst lves, says a writer in the St. I.ouls Clohe-Pc mocrat, there Is no small means ho sure, o thorough, as the letters that they write and do not write. When I say letters, I do not mean Juut th. letter Itself, the sheet or tthects of paper with the Mack characters, the words, the tho :(.'hix thereon Inscribed. Tin re nre so many, many things which go to make up a letter besides the letter Itself. First of all. us a ttrt of the person It represents, I think we will look at the date of the letter. Sup pis.' it hasn't any date? Ah, well, there's enough sail, fur the person who does not date her documents Is not a responsible being, and we netd not consider her and her letter. Hut Just by way of parenthesis, . thj vanuiicy in that letter of hers show once again tho difference which society makes in ill train of Its embryo men and ' women. From the time the small boy writes his first sprawly order for a fool ball he r.alUes he Is scmehow made to re alize that the date of his order Is of prime Imp n'tunce; while his sister, more matur In uh things than himselr, and very much morn knowing, knows enough to be aware that it Is rather sweet and Innocent, and "( like a woman," to forget the date when sh writes her earliest love letter. Given this tiny test Bhove Into life, la It much Unveiling the Kinsman Monument AT THE KINSMAN CRAVE. AT THE UNVEILING OF THE KINSMAN MONUMENT VIEW Jl'ST PR FORE THE FLAG WAS REMOVED FROM THE SHAFT. Characteristics of People Shown by Their Letters to be wondered at that many a woman doe not feel as does her brother the responsi bilities which should be hers, as well as his? riiiiriieleriiatlen lit I lie Marl, Say the name of the letter's starting point, the number of the street, the very day of the month and the year of the let ter' writing are all spelled out In full, thus "March seventeen, nineteen hundred and two." What then. Then, about the date of that letter I'd say at a glance that Bhe, yes, she again, was a person with plenty of time on her hands, with an overdue regard for the surface of politeness of life, and I'd say, too, that she was a follower of fada, social fads. Say the date were written thuj "8 10 '02." In that case I'd say that the dater was a persou who had not tlmo to rure to the person he was addressing; that be was a person always rushed for time; that ho always would be, or what amounts to the came thing, always would think he wbb; one of the people who will never get time to rest, who will never get through with half of his work as long as bo lives and who when the end of his day has come will lie down and leave a lot of bis unfinished work for other people to do. Then I'd say of him that I wished he would not write to me, because I'm not the patient member of our family and I haven't nearly tho patience to count on my fingers to find what month 8 stands for, and I haven't nearly the brains to remember without counting. So whether it is business or duty or love that prompts the writing of that dated abbreviatedly letter, I hope It won't get Itself written to me, and I think It would be much more businesslike and much more dutiful and very much more lovable to write August 10, 1902. Then, If the letter were worth my preserving on file as of some monetary value, or If I should care to keep it as a leaf In the history of Its day, or if It were worthy to be tied with a love-knot of blue, why then I might keep It till the year 2002, and anyone who saw might read that It was written not in thb eighteenth century or the nineteenth, or the first or the fifth, but on the tenth day of the last month of the second summer of the twentieth century. I got a letter yesterday written from a great hotel In one of our northern cities. I knew it was because It was written on the hotel's paper, and then there was something in the letter which gave me a sort of bint of Its writer's whereabouts. But what do 3 J CKNEUAL DODGE READING HIS AM-DRESS. you think was the date of that letter? Why, it was "Suturday," Just Saturday crowded down In the last little corner of the last page. I couldn't imagine, when I first saw it hiding there, what it meant. I didn't recognize it for some time as a date. There wasn't any telling when that mysterious little Saturday was written. It might have been, for anything it told of Itself, dead und buried before I was born. I suppose it was written last Saturday, but then I can never be sure, for Inside or outside there Is no clew to the year or the month or the week, for the postmark happens to be Illeg ible. It was a sweet letter, too, that letter dated Just Saturday. It told me bow much the writer loved me, and that's something that makes any letter sweet. It was a true letter, too, because I know the writer, and I know that she is true in word and deed. There Isn't anything in her life to conceal nothing, that is, but the date of her letters. Yet, I don't think It will Beem strange to any one who can read a letter by its date that this letter said it was so hard to write a letter, harder almost than anything else, because for one thing the babies swarmed around so only she didn't say swarmed I Bald that as a word sounding responsible for that "Saturday." Tho babies "came," I believe she said, and snatched at her writ ing materials and cried and coaxed and played end quarreled and asked more ques tions in a minute than any one could an swer In an hour. If I didn't know anything about that letter and Its writer except that "Saturday," I'd know that it would be a good many months before I'd get another letter similarly dated. People who don't know the year and the month are the peo ple who write very few letters. Then thb date at the top or the bottom of a letter Is not all I mean by the date of a letter. I mean the time it was written as related to the time It should have been written; and to read that, you know, we would have to see the date of the letter to which it was a reply. Say the letter were dated March 17, 1902, and the letter to which it was a reply were dated January 10, 1902. and say in that first letter there was a question which In one way or another asked for a prompt reply, a question ask ing for a bit of needed Information about some perscn or place or thing. Looking at the two dates, would not the last one tell you that its writer was a selfish per son? Yes. no matter what the apologies underneath the date, no matter what the excuses, the writer of the last date is a w r.sT to - ft fir Mu T - ' a Hir.H SCHOOL CADETS person absorbed in his or her own affairs to the extent of downright selfishness. TIiuiikIiIh on Style. Say the letter was not a business letter and were dated for the "return mail." Why, then I should say, without any data but the dates, that the dater wasn't very used to writing social letters. I'd say that he was a very married man or a bachelor of such length of standing that he had forgotten what a love letter looked like. I'd say his style would be somewhat stilted and as formal as were the letters of fifty years ago. Say the letter of March 17 were a reply to a letter that was somewhat in the style adopted by the Inhabitants of that country whose sovereign is a blindfolded boy with wings and a quivei.' full of arrows; and say tht first letter were written three weeks before March 17, then I'd say that the person who wrote that March 17 was a person who knew what Bhe was about, a person who knew enough to know that a little judicious waiting was the very means by which to accelerate the speed of the car which bears people to the blind boy's coun try; or maybe she is who knows? a p r son who wears her heart so deep down that it is hard for other people to find where it lies or what It holds. Perhaps the letter dated March 17 was written three weeks ago and she made herself wait three long weeks to date it. There have been people in the world with such queer ways as these. So much for the date. Then there is the paper. There's a deal of a person's individuality in the paper that he uses. Say it Is cheap cat on paper. Then perhaps he Is poor. Well, perhaps he Is, but he is something else, too. He 1 careless In his habits of living and he is generally careless in his dress and he caros nothing for the beautiful in his home or Its surroundings. He would be as happy or as satisfied In a box of a house at the edge of a mar.-h as In a home that was beautified by the best touches of nature and of art. Poer or not poor, he would get some bet ter paper than that if he cared to. Say the paper has and always has a costly monogram at the top and a crest. Then the person who uses the paper has money, of course. He has something else besides money, too. He has the desire to have you knew about his money. Say the paper Is ruled. Then, If the writer likes it so, he Is a person who doesn't mind being limited In bis mode of living, or be is a Photographs Taken at Council Muffs In The lice's Staff Artist " - ? t r 1.1 l -nji:. t i' J AT PARADE REST. person who moves In a rut, a person who doesn't care much for change of scene or companions; a person who has become or who can soon become a slave of habit. If he doesn't like the lines be will let you know It before the letter Is done. He will show Impatience in bis mode of expres sion; be will grow cramped In bis phrases and well, If he were I, he would, after Just one page, turn the paper around and write across the lines and so get elbow room and breathing space. Study of a Lifetime. Then there is the chirograpby of the let ter to be considered, only we won't con' slder It now, or we might never find time for anything else so long as we lived, for that is the study of a lifetime. And there is the length of the letter, and if it's thirty pages long, why then it is written by a woman and ten to one it is written to a woman, because any woman knows enough not to bore a man that she likes, and she wouldn't waste thirty pages of her time upon a man she didn't like, even to spite him. Dut when she is writing to a woman, why, that is different. There's the spelling of a letter, of course, and everybody knows that It is no credit at all to a person to spell well and a great disgrace to spell badly and there are nat ural good spellerB people who spell cor rectly without ever having tried and other people who tell you that they had to leatn to read and write three foreign tongues before they could spell their own, and they are generally the people whose letters never by any chance or mischance contain a word that is not spelled according to Webster's very last edition. There's the punctuation of a letter and there comes a very sure little test of the writer's culture, and I don't care for anyone to write to me who doesn't care enough for me to try to punctuate his or her letters to me at least according to the rules of common sense. There are, or, more strictly speaking, there are not, the letters we do not write. They do not Include our "bread and but ter letters," of course, for. of course, we all have been taught enough, or Dame Na ture hps given us ordinary politeness enough to make us p.-on'ptly vrite a page of appreciation to the hostess who has given us for a w. k a place al h r loarrt. Uut tlere ore so many letters that we haven't writton nnd lettor? cost so little to write and the non-writing of some let ters costs us so many regrets.
