Do you have a pet peeve?
Is there some irritating little thing others do that seems to steadily accumulate until you can’t help but be angry?
Isabella found herself in just such a situation regarding the many letters she received each month from readers of her magazine and books. Here’s what she had to say about it (as published in a Christian magazine):
A Scolding Mood
Perhaps it would be well for me to own at the outset that I am in a scolding mood this morning. On my desk lie three letters written with as much care and thought as I could give them. Out of my busy life I took time to do my best for the three earnest girls who wrote me on important subjects, all of them of such a character that it was either not wise to bring them into print or so important as regards time that it seemed not well to wait for the printed page. Yet what was the result? Within ten days of their writing, all three letters were returned to me with the words, “Person not found,” written on the envelope.
Now whose fault is that? Not the postmasters’ or postmen’s certainly; for, judging from the appearance of the returned letters, much care has been taken to find their owners. In one instance the information has been volunteered, “Address incomplete.” As if the writer did not know that! But how was I to help it? A name, and the name of a certain city in a certain State; this was all. No street, nor number, nor post-office box—nothing to indicate where in the great city the person was to be found.
If this had been my experience but three times in my life, I should indeed be a happy woman; but oh, dear, the innumerable times I have exhausted my knowledge on a given theme for the attempted benefit of another, only to have to consign my work two weeks afterwards to the waste-basket, and to go about with the injured feeling that someone who had opened her heart to me was smarting under the sense of having been rudely treated!
Dear friends, is not the moral plain? Why will you not give a carefully detailed address? If you are visiting in a strange city, expecting to be there but a short time, by all means give the full address of the person whose guest you are, or of the hotel or boarding-house where you are stopping. If it is possible that you may leave the town before the reply to your letter reaches there, consider how it would expedite matters if you would instruct your correspondent to write on the envelope, “If not there, please forward to —,” etc.
While we are on this subject and I am in the mood, suffer me a few more growls.
How many letters do you suppose I get, asking for immediate replies, with not so much as a postage-stamp enclosed? In most cases this is pure forgetfulness; but if one receives—let us say—one hundred letters a week, requiring private replies, and fifty of the writers have forgotten the return stamp, in the course of a year this amounts to quite a sum.
Let me tell you something. Instead of the stamp (which every well-informed person now encloses when he does not forget it), if those who desire a prompt reply would enclose an envelope properly addressed, with the stamp securely stuck on its own proper corner, their chances for very prompt response would be largely increased. One who has not a large list of correspondents can hardly be made to understand what a relief it is to find letters so prepared, nor what an amount of work it saves in the course of months. So small an item for the writer, such a load lifted from the shoulders of the burdened!
Isabella Alden 
She was very justified! I also think she may want to check the address correctness before writing a letter. 😉
I agree! I have a collection of old postcards; some of the addresses are so short (with just the person’s name, city and state) that I wonder how they ever made it to the right recipient back in those days! —Jenny