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During one year the Chicago post office handled more than two and one-half billion pieces of mail matter, weighing over 175,000 tons. Of this enormous bulk 99.9964 per cent was handled without error, the records indicating only one mistake in 27,130 pieces. But the public made more than ten million mistakes in addressing mail-one wrong out of every 146 pieces mailed, or 0.7 per cent. The necessity for using care in writing addresses is obvious.

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Be sure in every case that the form is right. Until you write the form correctly as a matter of habit, look over your work to see that you have included all six of the essential parts of a business letter, that they are in the proper order, that the formal punctuation is used, and that capital letters are in the right places.

a. Write forms for the following letters, neglecting the body. Also address an envelope for each letter.

I. A letter to Almer Coe, 74 State Street, Chicago.

2. A letter to Alexander Steinmetz and Company, who have a store at 327 North Hastings Street, in the capital city of California.

3. One letter from John L. Macklin's wife, whose name is Mary, to her dressmaker; another from her to a firm with which she has never before dealt.

4. A letter to John Matthews Manly, head of the department of English in The University of Chicago.

5. One letter from the widow of the late William H. Sawyer to her attorney; another from her to the Pure Food Company, 87 Battle Avenue, Cincinnati.

b. Write the following letters in full.

1. Order a bill of groceries from a merchant in your own

town.

2. Send $1.50 to the publishers, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, and ask to have a copy of William Vaughan Moody's Poems" mailed to a friend of yours.

3. As applicant for some position, you need to refer to a former teacher. Write asking for permission.

4. Apply for the position. State everything that your prospective employer is likely to wish to know.

5. You are staying at the Auditorium Hotel, Chicago, for a fortnight. Write to your postmaster at home, asking him to forward your mail to your new address. Second-class mail matter cannot be forwarded without extra postage. What shall he do about it?

6. Write to The Perry Mason Co., 201 Columbus Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts, and ask them to send your copy of the Youth's Companion to your summer home during the hot season. Be sure that you give them all the information they need.

7. Imagine yourself in a very small town on Easter Monday. Write to John Alexander, 395 Wall Street, New York, asking him to send you a copy of a book. Have you a charge account with him?

8. As manager of your baseball team, order a bill of three or four items from A. G. Spaulding & Brothers, 147 Wabash Avenue, Chicago. How shall the goods be sent ?

9. A young woman wrote to A. C. Jenkins & Co., 247 Seventh Street, Chicago, for twenty copies of "Andrew Lang's Fairy Books." The company replied that as there are a Green Fairy Book, a Red Fairy Book, a Purple Fairy Book, etc., all edited by Mr. Lang, they did not know which to send. They also stated that the price of each book is $1.50 and asked how the books should be sent. To this the young woman replied. Write the three letters.

10. Miss Pauline Ship of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, wrote to Curtis & Cameron, Pierce Building, Boston, asking the price of a Copley print of Burne-Jones's picture "Hope," and requesting a catalogue of their publications. The publishers courteously replied that their catalogues are sent only on receipt of twenty-five cents and that the Burne-Jones picture is published in several sizes, on each of which they quote a price. Owing to a mistake of Miss Ship herself, the letter for her is delivered to her cousin, Peter Ship. (What was her error?) Upon receiving the letter finally, she sent twenty-five cents and requested a copy of the catalogue. This the publishers sent, with a letter hoping to be favored with an order. Miss Ship ordered a picture, and the publishers acknowledged the order. Write these six letters and an envelope for each.

CHAPTER III

DEFINITENESS

EXERCISE 21 - Oral

READING AND STUDYING A DEFINITE DESCRIPTION

Read carefully Jim Hawkins's description of Treasure Island as the ship approached it. Prepare for oral reading and be ready to answer the questions that follow the selection.

a. A belt of fog had lifted almost simultaneously with the appearance of the moon. Away to the southwest of us we saw two low hills, about a couple of miles apart, and rising behind one of them a third and higher hill, whose peak was still buried in fog. All three seemed sharp and conical in figure.

b. The appearance of the island when I came on deck next morning was altogether changed. We were now lying becalmed about half a mile to the southeast of the low eastern coast. Greycoloured woods covered a large part of the surface. This even tint was indeed broken up by streaks of yellow sandbreak in the lower lands, and by many tall trees of the pine family, out-topping the others—some singly, some in clumps; but the general colouring was uniform and sad. The hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock. All were strangely shaped, and the Spyglass, which was by three or four hundred feet the tallest on the island, was likewise the strangest in configuration, running up sheer from almost every side, and then suddenly cut off at the top like a pedestal to put a statue on.

c. We brought up just where the anchor was on the chart, about a third of a mile from either shore, the mainland on one side and Skeleton Island on the other. The bottom was clean sand. The plunge of our anchor sent up clouds of birds wheeling and crying

over the woods; but in less than a minute they were down again, and all was once more silent.

The place was entirely land-locked, buried in woods, the trees coming right down to high-water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hills standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheatre, one here, one there. . . . The foliage around that part of the shore had a kind of poisonous brightness.

There was not a breath of air moving, nor a sound but that of the surf booming half a mile away along the beaches and against the rocks outside. A peculiar stagnant smell hung over the anchora smell of sodden leaves and rotting tree trunks. I observed the doctor sniffing and sniffing, like some one tasting a bad egg. "I don't know about treasure," he said, "but I'll stake my wig there's fever here." STEVENSON, "Treasure Island"

age

a. How far away do you imagine the ship here? What time of day is it? What did Jim notice?

b. How had the appearance of the island "altogether changed"? Why? What details given here could not have been seen before? Describe the island as you see it from this point of view.

c. What further changes are here described? What could not have been seen before? What details make this seem a disagreeable place?

In general. What words make the scene most real to you? Define conical, spires, pedestal, amphitheatre, stagnant.

This description makes us see the scene vividly because it is definite. It is important for the understanding of the story that all readers shall see pretty nearly the same thing here - so important, indeed, that, besides this careful word-picture, the author has given a map of the island. You have noticed that the description is definite in four ways: first, in subject; second, in details; third, in point of view; and fourth, in words. Each of these kinds of definiteness is important, and each will be considered in turn.

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