Not a very satisfactory letter, do you say?  Perhaps not to you, but most delightful and understandable to the little boy to whom it is written.  And if a little later you follow it with another containing one of the kodak pictures of the cat, with “Tommy” written under it, accompanying such a note as this, not only your little boy, but his teacher will bless you: 

     “DEAR HARRY: 

     “Mamma is well.  Papa is well.  Mamma and Papa love you.  Tommy loves
     you, too.  Tommy is the cat.  Tommy wants to see you.

     “Good-by.  MAMMA.”

I have written these two notes not as models to be copied, but to show you how with a little thought and care you may ring the changes on almost every sentence that your boy learns; and make use of every new word, giving him a great deal of pleasure and helping to fix the phrases in his mind and to make him realize that they are really valuable additions to his means of communication.  But I do not mean that you should confine your letters entirely to words and sentences that the child already knows.  In fact, new expressions, if they are short and simple, and if the main part of your letter is made up of things the child understands at once, will add very much to the interest of your letter.  He will be eager to know what the strange words mean, and the new nouns, verbs, and adjectives will go immediately to swell his vocabulary.

Like any child just learning to talk, your little boy will at first use nouns, when later he will use pronouns, so in your earliest letters to him you will be surer of making yourself understood if you do the same.  Probably, too, with the exception of two or three sentences like “I am well.  I love you,” you will notice that all his statements are written in the past tense, and that will be a guide to you to confine your own remarks to the past, for the most part, till you notice that he has begun to use the future and the present himself.  Watch his letters carefully and adapt your own language forms to his.

There are two things that, as a general rule, I would advise you not to write about, and these are any illnesses in the family and—­that supreme joy of school life—­the box you are planning to send.

My reasons for this taboo are that even very little children are often made unhappy and anxious, sometimes for days, if they know there is sickness at home, while in the second place boxes are so often delayed that they become the source of much disturbance of mind when the expressman fails to bring them.

I knew a little girl who watched every delivery for a week and cried after every one because the box her mother had promised her did not appear.  So let illness and boxes go unmentioned till you can write something like this, “Papa was sick last week.  He is well now.  He goes to the office every day.”  And after the box has had time to reach its destination you can say, “Mamma sent a box to you Wednesday.  She put two handkerchiefs, some new shoes, six oranges, and some money in the box.  Papa gave the money to you.”