Letter

In the afternoon that I was back from Chengdu, Vivian and I paid a visit to her secondary school - it was the open day to celebrate its 120th anniversary.

We didn't stay long. There's actually not very much to see. Nonetheless, in the school hall, we found an interesting letter in display - it was the original letter that a local official wrote to the Hong Kong governor at the time, proposing to set up a public girls' school.

The document was quite long (it gave details to the number of students planned, the proposed school fee, and so forth) and it took us a moment to finish. The letter was concluded in this sentence:

I have the honour to be, Sir, Your most humble obedient servant.

You find it outdated ? True. In fact, we are now often satisfied with Yours sincerely or Yours faithfully, and have done away with this kind of lengthy finale for ages. (I usually go one step further and conclude with the single word Sincerely. Well, who else could I be talking to ?)

However, wordy letters do not mean that people in that era were inefficient - quite the opposite in fact. The school was established a few months after the letter, without further paper work for surveying others' opinion or obtaining a consensus.

Good old days.

PS. The only opportunity that we could have a glimpse of elegant letters of this kind is to read Sherlock Holmes.