Advocate Jan 2014

THE ADVOCATE VOL. 72 PART 1 JANUARY 2014
9
ENTRE NOUS
We recently had occasion to stumble upon a personal
reference letter for a Scottish relative written on March 3,
1931, when he was a 25-year-old merchant seaman looking
for work in Glasgow. A highland minister of the Church of
Scotland wrote:
I have known the bearer … and the family to which he belongs, very
closely, for the last nine years; and I have great pleasure in certifying that
he is the son of most respectable parents, and that his character and conduct
have always been in perfect keeping with his home up-bringing. He
is thoroughly upright and honest; truthful and reliable; sober and correct
in all his conduct; and irreproachable in every way. He will do his work
faithfully, cheerfully and efficiently, and will try to please his masters
and to improve himself. I have perfect confidence in recommending him
for any post requiring intelligence, energy, tact and integrity.
The carefully typed letter, now more than 80 years old, is yellowing at
the edges, its folds sharpened by decades of being neatly pressed in a
folder. It is charming in its directness and, somehow, despite its perhaps
somewhat excessive veneration of the subject, manages to convey why it