Letters and Notes
CLXIII
In writing, endeavor to make your style clear, concise, elegant, and appropriate for all subjects. Avoid repetitions, erasures, insertions, omissions, and confusion of ideas, or labored construction. If your letter is to an equal or friend, these blemishes may remain; if otherwise, it must be commenced again.
CLXIV
To write on very coarse paper is allowable only for the most indigent; to use gilt-edged and perfumed paper for letters of business, would be ridiculous. The very best paper, but plain or without much ornament, is most to be recommended.
CLXV
It is extremely impolite to write upon a single leaf of paper, even if it is a billet; it should always be double, although we write only two or three lines. Envelopes are now used almost as much as the paper itself is.
CLXVI
Use a lofty style towards persons to whom you owe respect; an easy, trifling, or even jesting style toward a friend, and a courteous style toward one another generally.
CLXVII
The date is often necessary to the understanding of many passages of your letter, therefore never omit it. It may be put at the right hand of the commencement of the letter, if writing to an equal; but in writing to a superior, it should be at the end, in order that the title at the head of the letter may be entirely alone.
CLXVIII
Seal your communications with wax: bronze or other colors are more suitable than red; use black wax when in mourning. Let the seal be small; large ones are in very bad taste.
CLXIX
Ceremonious notes and social letters should always be in the third person, and of course not signed.
CLXX
Letters of introduction should be concise and brief, and enclosed in an envelope, unsealed.