This accidental resemblance of name has often been used for dishonest purposes in other ways than the one just described.

Snooks manufactures a patent medicine which is beginning to obtain some celebrity, when some obscure Snooks starts up with _his_ pill, or elixir. The innocent public, ready to swallow pills and stories bearing the name of Snooks, makes no distinction between the two personages; and the "original Jarley" is compelled to share his honors and emoluments with his upstart namesake. Trickery like this can seldom be reached by law, but the appropriator of the contents of a letter under circ.u.mstances like those above detailed, is dealt with like any other kind of robbery.

CHAPTER XXV.

IMPORTANCE OF ACCURACY.

After giving "outsiders" the share of blame which rightly belongs to them for the delay, miscarrying, and loss of valuable mail matter, a balance remains due to the post masters and post-office clerks.

We have elsewhere expressed our views respecting dishonesty in these officials, and shall consequently confine our present remarks princ.i.p.ally to carelessness and other similar faults, which can hardly be called crimes, but which often produce effects as disastrous as those which are the result of evil intention. These faults, indeed, differ only in degree from what are termed crimes; for neglect of duty, is on a small scale, a species of dishonesty.

There is, perhaps, no situation in which a lack of promptness and accuracy in the transaction of business may be productive of so great evil, as in that of a post-office employe. Those engaged in ordinary branches of business have some idea of the relative consequence of the matters about which they are occupied from day to day. They can generally know what is the actual importance of any given transaction, so that, if they are disposed to be negligent, they may, if they choose, avoid incurring the guilt and blame which would follow unfaithfulness in great things.

But the post-office clerk seldom has the power of making such a discrimination. The letter which is carelessly left over to-day, may go to-morrow, but too late to save the credit of a tottering house, or to render the instructions it may contain, of any avail. In the rapid course of commercial transactions, what is wisdom one day, may be folly the next, and thus it not unfrequently happens that the best contrived plans may be ruined by the delay or non-arrival of a letter.

The following instance will ill.u.s.trate this.

Before the pa.s.sage of the late Postal Treaty with Great Britain, a clerk in one of our large cities was sent to the post-office to mail a letter, containing an order for goods on an English house. The clerk pocketed the twenty-four cents which he had been intrusted with for the purpose of pre-paying the letter; therefore agreeably to the postal arrangements then existing, it could not go by steamer, but was sent by a sailing vessel.

Consequently the order was delayed, and therefore was not executed as promptly as the firm sending it had expected; and when the goods arrived they had fallen in value to such an extent, that the firm in question incurred by the operation a loss estimated at at least ten thousand dollars.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Post Masters as Directories--Novel Applications--The b.u.t.ter Business.

A Thievish Family--"Clarinda" in a City--Decoying with Cheese--Post Master's Response.

A Truant Husband--Woman's Instinct.

Editors are supposed by many to be walking encyclopedias, with the record of the entire range of human knowledge inscribed on the tablets of their brains; and there are those who in like manner seem to consider post masters as living Directories, able at short notice to inform any one who chooses to ask, where Smith lives, and what business Jones is in, or what is the price of guano, (an inquiry actually made by letter, of a New York post master.)

In short, these Government officers are often called upon to serve the public in a sphere which Congress never contemplated in the various enactments it has pa.s.sed respecting the duties of post masters, and the details of the postal system.

A few specimens of letters received by different post masters, may not be uninteresting, as ill.u.s.trating this phase of post-office life.

Here is one from an individual desirous of entering into a mercantile transaction in the "botter" line, and receiving the post master's endors.e.m.e.nt of some good "commish marchan" who could be interested in the business.

G---- ----, Pennsylvania, January 29, 1855.

Postmaster will pleze to give this letter to a good Commish Marchan what he could pay for fresh botter everry weak if a man would cent a hundred up to 3 hundred paunts my intension is to go in sutch bisnis You will plese rite me back to this present time.

Yours Respectful

J. S.

If the "fresh botter" was "cent everry _weak_," as was proposed, it must undoubtedly have been very much sought after, as possessing the negative, but important merit of not being _strong_.

Our next specimen was received by the post master of one of the cities in Western New York, and is unique both as regards its object, and its orthography, or rather cacography, which appears like "fonotipy" run mad.

North S----, Nov. 19, 1854.

Dear friend it is with plaisure that I take my pen in hand to inform you of a famly moveing from this place the wider stacy and her to girls they are poor and haf to work for their liveing clarinda is the girl that workes the most from home mr sam shirtleff says that she has worked for him and she stole pork and cheese and the pork hid between the bed blankets and they found it and weid it and thaught a rat had braught it there and the cheese she carid home with her they sent to ladies there a visiting and sent a peic of cheese with them and they got tea and had cheese up.o.r.n the table and they sliped a peice of the cheese in thir laps and compard it togather and it was the same cind it was a large inglich cheese that shirtleff bought she has also worked to mr alford blax and his brother the old batchlor his mother was old and generly done the niting she nit seventeen pare of socks and layed them up for her boys when she got old and coldent nit no more and they was all taken away by her to pare afterwords was found at the store and she sed that she had took them they owed her five dolars yet and they wont pay her till she delivers the socks and she dare not make no fuss for fear they will bring her out she worked to mr cringlands and she hooked a pare of white kid gloves and a hym book and a pocket handkerchief and the gloves she traded away to the store for a dress by giveing a pare of socks to boot and she worked to truman buts this sumer she had taken a pare of stockin which they found in her sunday bonet and they lost to shiling in money and then they discharged her bengman grene bought a set of dishes and they lost to platters out of the set they lost sope and buter out of their sular she borrowed of mister spicer a silver pen which coast a dolar and after he was dead she denied haveing it and she told it herself that she sold it for half a dolar and a pennife and the pennife was fifty cents they borrowed a pale of wheat flour and when they carid it home and put to thirds rie The pepole most look out for them in the trincket line mr sir post master plese answer this as soon as you can and oblidge your friend much yours with respect

Direct your leter silas stickney North S----, N. Y.

The zeal of Silas, if he was actuated by no sinister motives--no spite toward "the wider stacy and her to girls," especially "clarinda," whose exploits form the burden of his complaints--this zeal is highly commendable, and united with it there is a fulness of specification in the catalogue of "clarinda's" misdemeanors which equals in richness and effect anything that even the fertile brain of d.i.c.kens could conceive.

The ingenious device of sending ladies to the suspected domicil under color of a friendly visit, but provided with a touchstone in the shape of "a peic of cheese," wherewith to detect the other piece supposed to have been purloined by some one of the thievish family, was worthy of a Vidocq; and the triumphant issue of the case, when their worthy Committee of Investigation "sliped a peic of cheese in their laps" and settled its ident.i.ty with the "inglich cheese" which the victimized "shirtleff" had purchased, showed the power of genius, attaining great ends by the use of simple means.

This epistle developes a new ramification of the postal system. A post master entreated to act as a conservator of public morals; to exert all his powerful influence against "clarinda," who proved treacherous to "mr sam shirtleff" in the matter of pork and cheese; and abstracted from "mr alford blax and his brother the old batchlor, the seventeen pare of socks" that their mother had "nit" to comfort their nether extremities when she, by reason of the infirmities of age, "coldent nit;" and filched "sope and buter" out of "bengman grenes sular;" to say nothing of the "pare of stockin" which were secreted in her "sunday bonet," and "to shilling," the loss of which occasioned her discharge from the service of "truman buts."

Upon this unfortunate post master was thrown the charge of seeing that the city received no detriment from the demoralizing influence of Clarinda!

This gentleman, not willing to be outdone by his correspondent in his devotion to the public good, indited the following reply:--

B---- Post-Office, Dec. 13, 1854.

Mr. Silas Stickney,

Dear Sir:

I am in receipt of yours of the 19th ult., and in reply would say that I cannot too highly commend your solicitude in behalf of good morals, and your discretion in selecting the post master of this place to carry out your benevolent designs toward its inhabitants.

The corrupting influence of small villages upon large towns is a thing much to be lamented, and it grieves me to think that the unsophisticated inhabitants of this place are to be exposed to the machinations of the "widow stacy and her to girls." It will be, sir, like the Evil One entering the garden of Eden, where all was innocence and purity!

If in the course of my official duties, I find it feasible to ward off impending danger from this immaculate town, be a.s.sured that I shall not fail to do so.

Yours, &c.,

W. D----, P. M.

But post masters are made confidants in graver matters than these.

They are not unfrequently called upon by deserted wives to look up their truant husbands, and by desolate husbands to aid them in recovering frail partners, who have been unfaithful to their marriage vows, and have forsaken the "guides of their youth."

Letters of this description are princ.i.p.ally from the more illiterate cla.s.s of community; yet amid the crooked chirography and bad spelling, there sparkles so much tender affection, sometimes for the guilty one, sometimes for the innocent children, who are suffering from the unprincipled conduct of a parent, that these cases command the warmest sympathy of those whose aid is invoked, although the requests thus made relate to matters entirely out of their sphere, and consequently they are seldom able to afford much a.s.sistance to the parties in trouble.