But faintly, if we listen hard, is borne up to us a sound
of the scratching of innumerable pens--pens whose wielders are all
trying, as the author of this handbook urges them, to `be original,
fresh, and interesting' by dint of more or less strict adherence to
sample.
Giddily you draw back from the edge of the abyss. Come!--here is a
thought to steady you. The mysterious great masses of helpless folk
for whom `How Shall I Word It' is written are sound at heart, delicate
in feeling, anxious to please, most loth to wound. For it must be
presumed that the author's style of letter-writing is informed as much
by a desire to give his public what it needs, and will pay for, as by
his own beautiful nature; and in the course of all the letters that he
dictates you will find not one harsh word, not one ignoble thought or
unkind insinuation. In all of them, though so many are for the use of
persons placed in the most trying circumstances, and some of them are
for persons writhing under a sense of intolerable injury, sweetness
and light do ever reign. Even `yours truly, Jacob Langton,' in his
`letter to his Daughter's Mercenary Fiance',' mitigates the sternness
of his tone by the remark that his `task is inexpressibly painful.'
And he, Mr. Langton, is the one writer who lets the post go out on his
wrath.
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