Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 286, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1912 — Learn Composition From Love Letters [ARTICLE]

Learn Composition From Love Letters

Dr. Arthur Holmes, who advocates the exchange of love letters between students as a means of acquiring the art of composition, might point to Samuel Richardson as a proof of the efficacy of his method. Richardson began by acting as scribe for a number of young women, for whose correspondence, with their sweethearts’he frequently supplied not only the words, but the sentiments. His reputation for this kind of composition led a firm of printers to propose that he should prepare a “complete letter writer” for the use of “those country readers who cannot Indite for themselves.” Two or three of the epistles written for this purpose suggested a separate story, “and thence,” in Richardson’* own phrase, “sprang ‘Pamela.’"