CARD TRICKS.

Last year, Hallmark Cards began sending members of its writing staff to various cities to talk about what they do for a living. The program, called "Hallmark Writers on Tour," was created in response to inquiries from devoted greeting-card buyers--for whom the encounters nevertheless raise a delicate philosophical issue. A couple of weeks before this year's first trip, Bill Gray, who has been a Hallmark humor writer for sixteen years, told me, "It's kind of a double-edged sword to talk about greeting-card writing, because, in a way, you don't ever want the people who give or receive cards to think about the people who write them. You want the person who receives the card ...