On the lost art of letter writing
Open book
March 8, 1880
My dear Ada, —(Isn't that your short name? "Adelaide" is all very well, but you see when one's dreadfully busy one hasn't time to write such long words— particularly when it takes one half an hour to remember how to spell it—and even then one has to go and get a dictionary to see if one has spelt it right, and of course the dictionary is in another room, at the top of a high bookcase—where it has been for months and months, and has got all covered with dust—so one has to get a duster first of all, and nearly choke oneself in dusting it—and when one has made out at last which is dictionary and which is dust, even thenthere's the job of remembering which end of the alphabet "A" comes—for one feels pretty certain it isn't in the middle—then one
