Sometimes an ending falls naturally into a sentence that ends with your signature.  “If I could look up now and see you coming into the room, there would be no happier woman in the whole State than

    Your devoted mother.”

=LETTERS NO ONE CARES TO READ=

=LETTERS OF CALAMITY=

First and foremost in the category of letters that no one can possibly receive with pleasure might be put the “letter of calamity,” the letter of gloomy apprehension, the letter filled with petty annoyances.  Less disturbing to receive but far from enjoyable are such letters as “the blank,” the “meandering,” the “letter of the capital I,” the “plaintive,” the “apologetic.”  There is scarcely any one who has not one or more relatives or friends whose letters belong in one of these classes.

Even in so personal a matter as the letter to an absent member of one’s immediate family, it should be borne in mind, not to write needlessly of misfortune or unhappiness.  To hear from those we love how ill or unhappy they are, is to have our distress intensified in direct proportion to the number of miles by which we are separated from them.  This last example, however, has nothing in common with the choosing of calamity and gloom as a subject of welcome tidings in ordinary correspondence.

The chronic calamity writers seem to wait until the skies are darkest, and then, rushing to their desk, luxuriate in pouring all their troubles and fears of troubles out on paper to their friends.

=LETTERS OF GLOOMY APPREHENSION=

“My little Betty ["My little” adds to the pathos much more than saying merely “Betty”] has been feeling miserable for several days.  I am worried to death about her, as there are so many sudden cases of typhoid and appendicitis.  The doctor says the symptoms are not at all alarming as yet, but doctors see so much of illness and death, they don’t seem to appreciate what anxiety means to a mother,” etc.

Another writes:  “The times seem to be getting worse and worse.  I always said we would have to go through a long night before any chance of daylight.  You can mark my words, the night of bad times isn’t much more than begun.”

Or, “I have scarcely slept for nights, worrying about whether Junior has passed his examinations or not.”

=LETTERS OF PETTY MISFORTUNES=

Other perfectly well-meaning friends fancy they are giving pleasure when they write such “news” as:  “My cook has been sick for the past ten days,” and follow this with a page or two descriptive of her ailments; or, “I have a slight cough.  I think I must have caught it yesterday when I went out in the rain without rubbers”; or, “The children have not been doing as well in their lessons this week as last.  Johnny’s arithmetic marks were dreadful and Katie got an E in spelling and an F in geography.”  Her husband and her mother would be interested in the children’s weekly reports, and her own slight cough, but no one else.  How could they be?