1 OCTOBER 1994, Page 32

Do me a favour

Sir: Mary Killen (Your problems solved, 17 September) suggests a truly tactful stratagem by which a favour may be returned and I marvel at it.

However, I cannot help reflecting that that well-known agony uncle M. de la Rochefoucauld would have advised differ- ently. He said: `Un trop grand empressement s'acquitter dune dette est lui-meme une espece d'ingratitude' (an excessive anxiety to discharge an obligation is a kind of ingrati- tude).

Lionel F. Cerny

15 Auckland Avenue, Hull, North Humberside