Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, May 25, 1902, Page 28

Unveiling the Kinsman Monument | s YOUNG VETERANS AT THE KINSMAN GRAVE GENERAL DRESS READING HIS Photographs Taken at Council Bluffs by The Bee's Staff Artist AD HIGH SCHOOL CADETS AT PARADE RE AT THE UNVEILING OF THE KINSMAN MONUMENT—VIEW JUST BEFORE THE FLAG WAS REMOVED FROM THE SHAFT. Characteristics of People Shown by Their Letters ERE they come and there they go, despite all the thermometers and what they say, despite the snows and sleets of winter, despite the roaring, tearing, exasperating March winds, despite the weariness and the languor of the long, long, weary, languorous August days; here they come and here they go, flitting in and out on the wings of the United States mail as fresh and as wel- come as if it never was cold or hot. Let- ters, letters, letters—each one freighted with the mystery of its own message. And no matter how many they come and how fas and when and where, how and why, there's «n always new interest attached to the taking in of each letter, for there's always the intercst of the mysterious un known about any sealed letter. Here they come, there they go, letters, letters, letters each ene guarded by its door frail enough to open at a baby’'s touch, and strong as the might, the combined might of human law and social honor. And of all the small means we have of judging our fellow men and women, their habits, their tastes, their characteristics, their culture, theirsclves, says a writer in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, there is no small means so sure, so thorough, as the letters that they write and do not write. When 1 say letters, I do not mean just the letter itself, the sheet or sheets of paper with the black character the words, the thoughts thereon inscribed. There are so many, many things which go to make up a letter bosides the letter itself. First of all, as a test of the person it represents, I think we will look at the date of the letter. Sup- pceo it hasn't any date? Ah, well, there's enough said, for the person who does not date her documents is not a responsible being, and we necd not consider her and her letter But just by way of parenthes’s, the vacancy in that letter of hers shows once again the difference which soclety makes in the train of its embryo men and women. Krom the time the small boy writes his first sprawly order for a foou ball he rcalizes he is somehow made to re- alize that the date of his order is of prime importance while his sister, more mature iz such things than himself, and very much more knowing, knows enough to be aware that it is rather sweet and innocent, and “so like a woman,” to forget the date when she writes her earliest love letter. Given this tiny test shove into life, Is it much to be wondered at that many a woman does not feel as does her brother the responsi- bilities which should be hers, as well as his? « racteristios nt the Start, 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's writing are all spelled out in full, thus —*"March scventeen, nineteen hundred and two.” What then. Then, about the date of that letter I'd say at a glance that she, 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'a say, too, that she was a follower of fads, social fads. Say the date were written thus —10—'02."" In that case I'd say that the dater was a persoun who had not time to spare to the person he was addressing that he was a person always rushed for time; that he always would be, or what amounts to the same thing, always would think he was; one of the people who will never get time to rest, who will never get through with half of his work as long as he lives and who when the end of his day has come will lie down and leave a lot of his unfinished work for other people to do Then I'd say of him that I wished he woulad not write to me, because I'm not the patient member of our family and I haven't nearly the patience to count on my fingers to find what month 8 stands for, and 1 haven't nearly the brains remember without counting. So whether it is business or duty or love that prompts the writing of that dated abbreviatedly letter, 1 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 to 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 the 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 leiter 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 hint of its writer's whereabouts. But what do you think was the date of that letter? Why, it was ‘“'Saturday,” just Saturday crowded down in the last little corner of the last page. 1 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 and 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 how 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 seem any one who can read a letter by its date that this letter said it was so hard to write a letter, harde than anything else for one thing the babies swarmed around so—only she didn't say swarmed—I said that as a word sounding responsible for strange to almost because that “Saturday.”” The babies ‘‘came,” 1 believe 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 could an- swer in an hour. If I didn't know anything about that letter and its writer except that . turday,”” I'd know that it would be a good months before 1'd get another letter dated. People who don't know the year and the month are the peo ple who write very few letters Then the date at the top or 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 the date of the letter to which it was a reply. Say the letter 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 questien ing for a bit of needed infermation some perscn or place or thing at the two dates, would the tell you that its writer was a selfish son? Yes, no matter what the underneath the no matter excuses, the writer of the last any one many similarly the bottom were ask- about Looking not last one per- apologies what the date is a date person absorbed in his or her own affairs to the extent of downright selfishness. Thoughts 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 quiver full of arrows: and say the first letter were written three weeks before March 17, then I'd say that the who wrote that March 17 was a who knew what she was about, a who knew enough to know that a little judicicus waiting was the very means by which to accelerate the speed of the car which bears people to the blind boy's coun person person person try; or maybe she is—who knows?—a pr- 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 cot on paper. Then perhaps he is poor Well, perhaps, he is, but he is something else, too. He is careless in his habits of living and he is generally careless in his dress and he cares 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 eage of a marzh as in a home that was beautified by the best touches of nature and of art Poor not poor, he would get some 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 know about his money. Say the paper is ruled. Then, if the writer likes it €0, he is a person who doesn't mind being limited in his mode of llving, or he is a 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 he will let you know it before the letter 1s done. He will show impatience in his mode of expres- sion; he will grow cramped in his 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 chirography of the let- ter to be considered, only we won't con- sider 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 upon a man she didn't like, even to spite time him. But 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 spellers—people who spell rectly without ever having tried—and other people who tell you that they to learn to read and write 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 T 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 cor had three There are, or, more strictly speaking, there are not, the letters we do not write. They do not include our ‘bread and but we Na- ter letters,” of course, for, of course, all have been taught enough, or Dame ture hes given us ordinary politeness enough to make us promptly write a of appreciation the hostess who has given us for a week a place al her toard But tlere are so many lefters that we haven't written and letters so little to write ard the non-writing of some let- ters costs us many page to cost 80 regrets