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### 3.1 Sending Mail

Let's start our tour by sending ourselves a message which we can later read and process. Enter `M-x mh-smail` to invoke the MH-E program to send messages. Your message appears in an Emacs buffer whose mode1 is MH-Letter.

Enter your login name in the ‘`To:`’ header field. Press the <TAB> twice to move the cursor past the ‘`Cc:`’ field, since no carbon copies are to be sent, and on to the ‘`Subject:`’ field. Enter `Test` or anything else that comes to mind.

Press <TAB> again to move the cursor to the body of the message. Enter some text, using normal Emacs commands. You should now have something like this2:

         --:--  *scratch*   All L1     (Lisp Interaction)-------------------------
         To: wohler
         cc:
         Subject: Test
         X-Mailer: MH-E 8.1; nmh 1.1; GNU Emacs 23.1
         --------
         This is a test message to get the wheels churning...#

         --:**  {draft}   All L5     (MH-Letter)----------------------------------
         Type C-c C-c to send message, C-C ? for help

MH-E message composition window

Note the line of dashes that separates the header and the body of the message. It is essential that these dashes (or a blank line) are present or the body of your message will be considered to be part of the header.

There are several commands specific to MH-Letter mode3, but at this time we'll only use `C-c C-c` to send your message. Type `C-c C-c` now. That's all there is to it!

#### Footnotes

[1] A mode changes Emacs to make it easier to edit a particular type of text.

[2] If you're running Emacs under the X Window System, then you would also see a menu bar and a tool bar. I've left out the menu bar and tool bar in all of the example screens.

[3] You can get quick help for the commands used most often with `C-c ?` or more complete help with the `C-h m` (`describe-mode`) command.