I am, your humble servant, C.K.' This was writing like a man that understood what he was doing; and his correspondent in London would presently say--'This young man writes like a man of business; pray let us take care to use him well, for in all probability he will be a very good chapman.' The sum of the matter is this: a tradesman's letters should be plain, concise, and to the purpose; no quaint expressions, no book-phrases, no flourishes, and yet they must be full and sufficient to express what he means, so as not to be doubtful, much less unintelligible.

I can by no means approve of studied abbreviations, and leaving out the needful copulatives of speech in trading letters; they are to an extreme affected; no beauty to the style, but, on the contrary, a deformity of the grossest nature.

They are affected to the last degree, and with this aggravation, that it is an affectation of the grossest nature; for, in a word, it is affecting to be thought a man of more than ordinary sense by writing extraordinary nonsense; and affecting to be a man of business, by giving orders and expressing your meaning in terms which a man of business may not think himself bound by.

For example, a tradesman at Hull writes to his correspondent at London the following letter:-- 'SIR, yours received, have at present little to reply.

Last post you had bills of loading, with invoice of what had loaden for your account in Hamburgh factor bound for said port.