Cordially Yours

If You Are at a Loss as to How to Word it, Study Carefully Our New Impolite Letter-Writer

NANCY BOYD

LETTER to Person who has made you a Proposal of Marriage, Rejecting him.

Sir:

Do you take me for an idiot? For four seasons I have parried the advances of the talented, the titled, the handsome-as-Apollo, and the verminous-with-wealth. It was for me Paderewski took up politics, for me D'Annunzio became a soldier. The Grand Duke Michael has begged for my photograph in three languages, and Russian, Freud has dreamed of me, Muratore has asked me to sing Celeste Aida to him by the hour, a Communist once gave me his seat in a street-car, a Count has run off with my pocket-book, and a King has made a pun about me. For what do you think I am waiting?—for you? Be reasonable!

As for the day we got caught in a shower on Lake George and were obliged to go ashore and seek shelter under the canoe together, I can only say that such accidents happen to us all.

I take cold very easily. And you were the only dry spot for miles around.

Cordially yours,

LETTER to Person who has made you a Proposal of Marriage, Accepting him.

Dear Sir:

It has been raining all day, everybody received mail but me, and we had calf's-brains for luncheon. I have been thinking over what you said.

You are far from being my girlish ideal of a Prince Charming. If anybody had told me ten years ago that I should some day marry a man like yourself, I should have guffawed in her face. But there is no denying that I am twenty-eight years old, and that my arms are getting thin.

Of course there are things about you that would drive me frantic in a month's time,—the way you always let every car on the road get past you, for instance; the fact that you never know when the Victrola is running down; the way you always read aloud the passages in books which strike you as being funny; the way you have of yanking me across Fifth Avenue while the traffic is at its maddest; and the fatuous way you have of talking about New York as if you had just given birth to it. But all men, even the clever and good-looking ones, are irritating at times.

On the whole, I have decided to take you. You are not so tall as I like them, but I think you are tall enough so that we won't look ridiculous together. And you have money enough so that I shall be able to dress twice as well as ever before; I look forward with eagerness to spending your money. ^

Of course, it is a very serious decision that I am making. I am conscious that I am not bringing down what you would call a brilliant match. Yet, considering it carefully from all sides, the idea does not on the whole appear so screamingly funny as, at first, it struck me.

Cordially yours,

P. S. I have a dreadful feeling that as soon as we are married you will begin calling me Little Woman. But if you bore me too much, I can always get a divorce; and I shall stand a much better chance the next time.

CRUSH Letter to Actor, accompanying Pair of Embroidered Carpet-Slippers.

Do not leap at once to the conclusion that these slippers which I am sending were embroidered for you by my own fair hand. They were given to my husband as a Christmas present by his invalid aunt, and we haven't known what in the world to do with them; finally I thought of you. I had always wished to send you some little token of my interest in your work, and it occurred to me that these hideous objects would do quite as well as anything else for you to hurl through the door at your stage-manager.

Sir, there is nothing I would rather do than watch you act. I will leave anything to go to see you,—gossip, a hat-show, salted pecans, the only hammock, anything. Not that you act well,—you don't; nobody knows that better than yourself. But your voice, fretful with dyspepsia and husky with gin, thrills me to the core of my being; and you have the most beautiful legs that ever I saw on mortal man. Believe me, there is nobody on the stage today for whom I see ahead the future that I see for you, —a future of orchids, villas in Nice, wrinkle eradicators, and delirium tremens.

Of course, it would be very fine to be a real artist, to lose one's own personality in that of the character, never to call into play quite all one's vox-angelica-diapason-tremolo to ask for the mustard with, nor sit too often in tights on the edge of a table, leaning back on one's bejewelled hands. A fine thing, I repeat, it must be, to be a real artist; but oh, sir, how much greater a thing it is to give pleasure to thousands of people!

Cordially yours,

LETTER to Person who has just sent you an Announcement of her Wedding, whose Name seems Vaguely Familiar, but whose Features you Cannot Recall.

Madam:

Of what possible interest to me you may consider the fact of your approaching nuptials, I cannot imagine. To each of us, of course, his own birth, death, and other vital statistics assume an importance far in excess of their significance as national catastrophes. But why, when one is about to plunge oneself simperingly into a shallow sea of cooked breakfast-food, one should wish a crowd of spectators lining the bank, is beyond my powers to conjecture.

It may be (and this seems more reasonable) that you are merely passing around a bunch of engraved hand-bills, in the hope of beating from cover a few lemon-forks, pie-knives, asparagus-tweezers, red-and-yellow candlesticks, player-pianos, motor-boats, long leases on apartments in town, and lots in the country with shore frontage. In that case, what a task has been yours! Hunting up the names and addresses of cousins, second-cousins, cousinsby-marriage; boarding-school mates of whom you used to ridicule the rubbers, the sidecombs, the drag with the principal, the classroom recitations, the bed-room confidences, and the visiting relations; college chums of your fiance whomhe once endeavoured with desperate zeal to keep out of his fraternity; town-acquaintances to whose houses you go to call and leave your card on occasions when you have reason to believe they will be absent from home; people you met on the boat crossing from Cherbourg; people you met on the train going to Colorado Springs; golf-instructors, hairdressers, osteopaths, former suitors and former chauffeurs.

Ah, surely, no one but the hardest-hearted person in the world could fail to assist you in this, your pretty, twittering attempt to furnish your little home, could fail to take the first bus to Tiffany's and, sweeping the entire contents of two show-cases into a dry-goods box, have the glittering baubles boarded up and shipped to you with a modest card,—no one but the hardest-heafted person in the world, I repeat, could fail, upon receipt of this touching appeal which lies before me in slightly crumpled condition, to rush out at once and go galloping up and down the Avenue, buying up for you all the things he has wanted all his life for himself, and never been able to afford.

Madam, I am that person.

Cordially yours,

LETTER to Presídent of United States, who one Evening took Dinner at your House, and wanted Something to Read on the Train. Sir:

Do not presume to disregard this letter. It has to do with your personal welfare. I would advise you to give it your close attention.

I think you will agree with me that a man who is negligent, procrastinating, dishonest and acquisitive in his private life, is unworthy to stand publicly at the head of a great nation. He should be put down from his place. Is it not so? And it should be the duty, nay, let us say the pleasure, of any citizen in possession of evidence against that man to bring about that man's confusion by fair means or foul, but preferably by foul.

Sir, you are all these things and more. You are a thief.

Where is my copy of Jurgen?

Give it back to me.

If I do not receive it by return mail, I shall throw a quart of Scotch into a suit-case, take a flying trip to your little old White House, and do myself the honour of assaulting you, in person. Cordially yours,

LETTER to Hostess with whom you have just been spending a Fortnight in the Country. Dear Madam:

Home again,—and so glad to be here I could cry! Have just had my first decent cup of coffee in two weeks. Why you do not persuade your Japanese jiu-jitsu artist to commit harikiri and get a cook, I cannot surmise.

Of course, it was not your fault that it rained all the time I was at your house, but really, a hostess should have some resources. And what a house! And what a crew of guests!

Mother says I am looking tired, and suggests that I take a complete rest. I tell her that is just what I don't need. Cordially yours,

P. S. If you should happen to come across two rather good-looking crepe de chine nightgowns, a mauve wool sweater, a Florentine stamped-leather cigarette-case, and a platinum wrist-watch, you might send them back to me.