cannot put them into words. And they ought not to try, for the secret of
letter-writing is intimate triviality. Bill could not have described the
retreat from Mons; but he could have told, as he told me, about the blister
he got on his heel, how he hungered for a smoke, how he marched and marched
until he fell asleep marching, how he lost his pal at Le Cateau, and how
his boot sole dropped off at Meaux. And through such trivialities he would
have given a living picture of the great retreat.

In short, to write a good letter you must approach the job in the lightest
and most casual way. You must be personal, not abstract. You must not say,
"This is too small a thing to put down." You must say, "This is just the
sort of small thing we talk about at home. If I tell them this they will
see me, as it were, they'll hear my voice, they'll know what I'm about."
That is the purpose of a letter. Keats expresses the idea very well in one
of those voluminous letters which he wrote to his brother George and his
wife in America and in which he poured out the wealth of family affection
which was one of the most amiable features of his character. He has
described how he had been to see his mother, how she had laughed at his bad
jokes, how they went out to tea at Mrs. Millar's, and how in going they
were struck with the light and shade through the gateway at the Horse
Guards. And he goes on: "I intend to write you such volumes that it will be
impossible for me to keep any order or method in what I write; that will
come first which is uppermost in my mind, not that which is uppermost in my
heart--besides I should wish to give you a picture of our lives here
whenever by a touch I can do it; even as you must see by the last sentence
our walk past Whitehall all in good health and spirits--this I am certain
of because I felt so much pleasure from the simple idea of your playing a
game of cricket."

There is the recipe by one of the masters of the craft. A letter written in