Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/46

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used it to write to a few of the undergraduates who, it seemed to me, had done something that merited attention or was worthy of praise. When I had finished there were fifteen or twenty in all. The summer dragged on, and I was made happy by receiving two acknowledgments, one from McKinley, ashy little country freshman, and a gracious pleasant one from Bullard whom most people at first sight might have thought crude. I should scarcely have expected either to reply.

Now the thing that convinces me that all this talk about the reliability of the mails is wrong is the fact that I did not hear from those other eighteen letters.

Take Burton, for example, who won the western tennis championship. I'm sure that if he had received my congratulations, he would at least have acknowledged the note. He comes from a part of the country where they are fed on courtesy and good form three times a day, and he has an aunt who