Late in the afternoon of the 14th of February last past, an individual
who bore not the smallest resemblance to a despairing lover, or,
indeed, to a lover in any state of mind, was seen to drop into the box
of a Fleet Street receiving-house two letters folded in flaming covers.
He did not look round to see if he were observed, but walked boldly
into the shop with a third epistle, and deposited thereon one penny.
Considering the suspicious appearance of this document—for its envelope
was green—he retired from the counter with extraordinary _nonchalance_,
and coolly walked on towards Ludgate Hill.
Long paces soon brought him to St. Martin’s-le-Grand, for he strode
like a man who had an imminent appointment. Sure enough, under the
clock of the General Post-Office, he joined another, who eagerly asked,—
‘Have you done it?’
The answer was, ‘I have!’
‘Very well. Let us now watch the result.’
Most people are aware that the Great National Post-Office in St.
Martin’s-le-Grand is divided into halves by a passage, whose sides
are perforated with what is called the ‘Window Department.’ Here
huge slits gape for letters, whole sashes yawn for newspapers, or
wooden panes open for clerks to frame their large faces, like giant
visages in the slides of a Magic Lanthorn; and to answer inquiries, or
receive unstamped paid letters. The southern side is devoted to the
London District Post, and the northern to what still continues to be
called the ‘Inland Department,’ although foreign, colonial, and other
outlandish correspondence now passes through it. It was with the London
District Branch that the two gentlemen first appeared to have business.
Having been led through a maze of offices and passages more or less
dark, they found themselves—like knights-errant in a fairy tale—‘in an
enormous hall, illumined by myriads of lights.’ Without being exactly
transformed into statues, or stricken fast asleep, the occupants of
this hall (whose name was Legion) appeared to be in an enchanted state
of idleness. Among a wilderness of long tables, and of desks not unlike
those on which butter-men perform their active parts of legerdemain
in making ‘pats’—only these desks were covered with black cloth—they
were reading books, talking together, wandering about, lying down, or
drinking coffee—apparently quite unused to doing any work, and not at
all expectant of ever having anything to do, but die.
In a few minutes, and without any preparation, a great stir began at
one end of this hall, and an immense train of private performers, in
the highest state of excitement, poured in, getting up, on an immense
scale, the first scene in the ‘Miller and his Men.’ Each had a sack
on his back; each bent under its weight; and the bare sight of these
sacks, as if by magic, changed all the readers, all the talkers, all
the wanderers, all the liers-down, all the coffee-drinkers, into a
colony of human ants!
For the sacks were great sheepskin bags of letters tumbling in from the
receiving-houses. Anon they looked like whole flocks suddenly struck
all of a heap, ready for slaughter; for a ruthless individual stood
at a table, with sleeves tucked up and knife in hand, who rapidly cut
their throats, dived into their insides, abstracted their contents,
and finally skinned them. ‘For every letter we leave behind,’ said the
bag-opener, in answer to an inquiry, ‘we are fined half-a-crown. That’s
why we turn them inside out.’
The mysterious visitors closely scrutinised the letters that were
disgorged. These were _from_ all parts of London _to_ all parts of
London and to the provinces and to the far-off quarters of the globe.
An acute postman might guess the broad tenour of their contents by
their covers:—business letters are in big envelopes, official letters
in long ones, and lawyers’ letters in none at all; the tinted and
lace-bordered mean Valentines, the black-bordered tell of grief, and
the radiant with white enamel announce marriage. When the Fleet Street
dispatch appeared, the visitors tracked it, and the operations of
the clerk who separated the three bundles of which it consisted were
closely followed. With the prying curiosity which now only began to
show itself, one of the intruders actually took a copy of the bill
which accompanied the letters. It set forth in three lines that there
were so many ‘Stamped,’ so many ‘Prepaid,’ and so many ‘Unpaid.’
The clerk counted the stamped letters like lightning, and a flash of
red gleaming past showed the inquirers that one of their epistles was
safe. Suddenly the motion was stopped; the official had instinctively
detected that one letter was insufficiently adorned with the Queen’s
profile, and he weighed and taxed it double in a twinkling. Having
proved the number of stamped letters to be exactly as per account
rendered, he went on checking off the prepaid, turning up the sender’s
green missive in the process. He then dealt with the unpaid, amongst
which the lookers-on perceived their yellow one. The cash column
was computed and cast in a single thought, and a short-hand mark,
signifying ‘quite correct,’ dismissed the Fleet Street bill upon a
file, for the leisurely scrutiny of the Receiver-General’s office.
All the other letters, and all the other bills of all the other
receiving-houses, were going through the same routine at all the other
tables; and these performances are repeated ten times in every day, all
the year round, Sundays excepted!
‘You perceived,’ said one of the two friends, ‘that in the rapid
process of counting, our stamped letter gleamed past like a meteor,
whilst our money-paid and unpaid epistles remained long enough under
observation for a careful reading of the superscriptions.’
‘That delay,’ said an intelligent official, ‘is occasioned because
the latter are unstamped. Such letters cause a great complication of
trouble, wholly avoided by the use of Queen’s heads. Every officer
through whose hands they pass—from the receiving-house-keeper to the
carriers who deliver them at their destinations—has to give and take a
cash account of each. If the public would put stamps on _all_ letters,
it would save us, and therefore _itself_, some thousands a-year.’
‘What are the proportions of the stamped to the prepaid and unpaid
letters which pass through all the post-offices during the year?’
‘We can tell within a very near approximation to
correctness:—337,500,000 passed through the post-offices of the United
Kingdom during last year, and to every 100 of them about fifty had
stamps; 46 were prepaid with pennies; and only 4 were committed to the
box unpaid.’
While one of the visitors was receiving this information, the other had
followed his variegated letters to the next process; which was that of
stamping on the sealed face, in red ink, the date and hour of despatch.
The letters are ranged in a long row, like a pack of cards thrown
across a table, and so fast does the stamper’s hand move, that he can
mark 3000 in an hour. While defacing the Queen’s heads on the other
side, he counts as he thumps, till he enumerates fifty, when he dodges
his stamp on one side to put his black mark on a piece of plain paper.
All these memoranda are afterwards collected by the president, who,
reckoning fifty letters to every black mark, gets a near approximation
to the number that have passed through the office.
It was by this means that our friends obtained the following account
of the number of district letters that passed through this office on
St. Valentine’s Day:—
|----------------------------------------------------|
| Feb. 14th, | Paid. | Unpaid. |Stamped.| Total. |
| 1850. | | | | |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| | 1d. | 1d. | 2d. | | |
|----------------------------------------------------|
|Collections.| | | | | |
| 8 o’clock. | 6,872 | 52 | 1,216 | 20,082 | 28,222 |
|10 ” | 6,212 | 19 | 607 | 13,629 | 20,467 |
|12 ” | 7,069 | 36 | 612 | 15,240 | 22,957 |
| 1 ” | 2,989 | 17 | 277 | 6,395 | 9,678 |
| 2 ” | 6,520 | 39 | 535 | 13,696 | 20,790 |
| 3 ” | 2,456 | 36 | 328 | 6,909 | 9,729 |
| 4 ” | 4,873 | 36 | 375 | 13,478 | 13,478 |
| 5 ” | 3,340 | 28 | 317 | 8,207 | 11,892 |
| 6 ” | 9,300 | 129 | 958 | 27,950 | 38,337 |
| 8 ” | 3,903 | 32 | 812 | 6,650 | 11,487 |
|----------------------------------------------------|
| |53,624 | 424 | 6,037 |126,952 |187,037 |
|----------------------------------------------------|
To this total are to be added 6,000 ‘bye’ letters—or those which passed
from village to village within the suburban limits of the district
post without reaching the chief office—and 100,000 destined for the
provinces and places beyond sea, which were transferred to the Inland
Department. The grand total for the day, therefore, rose to nearly
300,000. Thus the sacrifices to the fane of St. Valentine—consisting
of hearts, darts, Cupid peeping out of paper-roses, Hymen embowered
in hot-pressed embossing, swains in very blue coats and nymphs in
very opaque muslin, coarse caricatures and tender verses—caused an
augmentation to the revenue on this anniversary equal to about 70,000
missives; 123,000 being the usual daily average for district and
‘byes’ during the month of February. This increase, being peculiar
to cross and district posts, does not so much affect the Inland
Office, for lovers and sweethearts are generally neighbours. The
entire correspondence of the three kingdoms is augmented on each St.
Valentine’s day to the extent of about 400,000 letters.
‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed one of the visitors, regarding the piles
of epistles on the numerous tables, ‘that this mass of letters can be
arranged and sent away to their respective addresses in time to receive
the next collection, which will arrive in less than an hour?’
‘Quite,’ replied an obliging informant, ‘I’ll tell you how we do it.
We have divided London into seventeen sections. There they are, you
perceive.’ He then pointed to the tables with pigeon-holes numbered
from one to seventeen; one marked ‘blind,’ with a nineteenth labelled
‘general.’ It was explained that the proper arrangement of the letters
in these compartments constitutes the first sorting. They are then
sorted into sub-divisions; then into districts, and finally handed
over to the letter-carriers, who, in another room, arrange them for
their own convenience into ‘walks.’ As the visitors looked round
they perceived their coloured envelopes—which were all addressed to
Scotland—suddenly emerge from a chaotic heap, and lodge in the division
marked ‘general,’ as magically as a conjurer causes any card you may
choose to fly out of the whole pack. ‘These letters,’ remarked the
expositor, ‘being for the country will be presently passed into the
Inland Office through a tunnel under the hall. The “blind” letters have
superscriptions which the sorters cannot decypher, and are sent to the
“blind” table where a gentleman presides, to whom, from the extreme
sharpness of his vision, we give the _lucus à non lucendo_ name of the
“blind clerk.” You will have a specimen of his powers presently.’
While this dialogue was going on there was a general abatement of
the noise of stamping, and shuffling letters, and when the visitors
looked round, the place had relapsed into its former tranquillity.
It was scarcely credible that from 30,000 to 40,000 letters had been
received, stamped, counted, sorted, and sent away in so short a time.
‘A judicious division of labour,’ remarked one of our friends, ‘must
work these miracles.’
‘Yes, sir,’ was the reply of an official, ‘and there are from 1200
to 1700 of us to do the work of the district post alone. When it was
removed from Gerard Street to this building there was not a quarter
of that number. For instance—then, three carriers sufficed for the
Paddington district; but, by the dispatch you have just seen completed,
we have sent off 2000 letters to that single locality by the hands of
twenty-five carriers.’
‘The increase is attributable to the penny system?’ interrogated one of
our inquiring friends.
‘Entirely.’
The questioner then referred to a Parliamentary paper of which he
had obtained possession. It showed him the history of general postal
increase since the era of dear distance rates. In 1839—under the
old system—the number of letters which passed through the post was
76,000,000. In 1840 came the uniform penny, and for that year the
number was 162,000,000, or an increase of 93,000,000, equal to 123
per cent. That was the grand start; afterwards the rate of increase
subsided from 36 per cent. in 1841, to 16 per cent. in 1842 and 1843.
In 1845, and the three following years, the increase was respectively,
39, 37, and 30 per cent. Then succeeded a sudden drop; perhaps the
culminating point had been attained. The Post-Office is, however, a
thermometer of commerce: during the depressing year 1848, the number
of letters increased no more than 9 per cent. But last year 37,500,000
epistles passed through the office, being an augmentation of 8,500,000
upon the preceding year, or 11 per cent. of progressive increase.
Another Parliamentary document shows, that, although the business
is now exactly four-and-a-half times more than it was in 1839, the
expense of doing it has only doubled. In the former year the cost of
the establishment was not quite 690,000_l._; in 1849 it was about
1,400,000_l._
While one visitor was poring over these documents, the other
deliberately watched the coloured envelopes. They were, with about 2000
other General Post letters, put into boxes and taken to the tunnel to
be conveyed into the Inland Office upon a horizontal band worked by a
wheel. The two friends now took leave of the District Department to
follow the objects of their pursuit.
It was a quarter before six o’clock when they crossed the Hall—six
being the latest hour at which newspapers can be posted without fee.
It was then just drizzling newspapers. The great window of that
department being thrown open, the first black fringe of a thunder-cloud
of newspapers impending over the Post-Office was discharging itself
fitfully—now in large drops, now in little; now in sudden plumps, now
stopping altogether. By degrees it began to rain hard; by fast degrees
the storm came on harder and harder, until it blew, rained, hailed,
snowed, newspapers. A fountain of newspapers played in at the window.
Water-spouts of newspapers broke from enormous sacks, and engulphed the
men inside. A prodigious main of newspapers, at the Newspaper River
Head, seemed to be turned on, threatening destruction to the miserable
Post-Office. The Post-Office was so full already, that the window
foamed at the mouth with newspapers. Newspapers flew out like froth,
and were tumbled in again by the bystanders. All the boys in London
seemed to have gone mad, and to be besieging the Post-Office with
newspapers. Now and then there was a girl; now and then a woman; now
and then a weak old man: but as the minute hand of the clock crept near
to six, such a torrent of boys, and such a torrent of newspapers came
tumbling in together pell-mell, head over heels, one above another,
that the giddy head looking on chiefly wondered why the boys springing
over one another’s heads, and flying the garter into the Post-Office
with the enthusiasm of the corps of acrobats at M. Franconi’s, didn’t
post themselves nightly, along with the newspapers, and get delivered
all over the world.
Suddenly it struck six. Shut Sesame! Perfectly still weather. Nobody
there. No token of the late storm—Not a soul, too late!
But what a chaos within! Men up to their knees in newspapers on great
platforms; men gardening among newspapers with rakes; men digging and
delving among newspapers as if a new description of rock had been
blasted into those fragments; men going up and down a gigantic trap—an
ascending and descending-room worked by a steam-engine—still taking
with them nothing but newspapers! All the history of the time, all
the chronicled births, deaths, and marriages, all the crimes, all the
accidents, all the vanities, all the changes, all the realities, of all
the civilised earth, heaped up, parcelled out, carried about, knocked
down, cut, shuffled, dealt, played, gathered up again, and passed from
hand to hand, in an apparently interminable and hopeless confusion,
but really in a system of admirable order, certainty, and simplicity,
pursued six nights every week, all through the rolling year! Which of
us, after this, shall find fault with the rather more extensive system
of good and evil, when we don’t quite understand it at a glance; or set
the stars right in their spheres?
The friends were informed that 70,000,000 newspapers pass through all
the post-offices every year. Upwards of 80,000,000 newspaper-stamps
are distributed annually from the Stamp-Office; but most of the London
papers are conveyed into the country by early trains. On the other
hand, frequently the same paper passes through the post several times,
which accounts for the small excess of 10,000,000 stamps issued over
papers posted. In weight, 187 tons of paper and print pass up and down
the ingenious ‘lift’ every week, and thence to the uttermost corners of
the earth—from Blackfriars to Botany Bay, from the Strand to Chusan.
As to the rooms, revealed through gratings in the well, traversed
by the ascending and descending-room, and walked in by the visitors
afterwards,—those enormous chambers, each with its hundreds of sorters
busy over their hundreds of thousands of letters—those dispatching
places of a business that has the look of being eternal and never to
be disposed of or cleared away—those silent receptacles of countless
millions of passionate words, for ever pouring through them like a
Niagara of language, and leaving not a drop behind—what description
could present them? But when a sorter goes home from these places
to his bed, does he dream of letters? When he has a fever (sorters
_must_ have fevers sometimes) does he never find the Welch letters
getting into the Scotch divisions, and the London letters going to
Jericho? When he gets a glass too much, does he see no double letters
mis-sorting themselves unaccountably? When he is very ill, do no
dead letters stare him in the face? And yonder dark, mysterious,
ground-glass balcony high up in the wall, not unlike a church organ
without the pipes—the screen from whence an unseen eye watches the
sorters who are listening to temptation—when he has a nightmare, does
he never dream of _that_?
Then that enormous table upon which the public shoot their letters
through the window-slits—do the four men who sit at it never fancy
themselves playing at whist, gathering up an enormous pack of red aces,
with here and there a many-hued Valentine to stand for a Court card?
Their duty is termed ‘facing,’ or turning the ace-like seals downwards,
ready for stamping.
The system of stamping, sorting, and arranging, is precisely similar
to that in the District Branch, and by his recently acquired knowledge
of it, the person who posted the coloured letters was able to trace
them through every stage, till they were tied up ready to be ‘bagged,’
and sent away. While thus employed, his companion made the following
observations:—
In an opposite side of the enormous apartment, a good space and a few
officials are devoted to repairing the carelessness of the public,
which is—in amount and extent—scarcely credible. Upon an average,
300 letters per day pass through the General Post-Office totally
unfastened; chiefly in consequence of the use of what stationers are
pleased to call ‘adhesive’ envelopes. Many are virgin ones, without
either seal or direction; and not a few contain money. In Sir Francis
Freeling’s time, the sum of 5000_l._ in Bank notes was found in a
‘blank.’ It was not till after some trouble that the sender was traced,
and the cash restored to him. Not long since, an humble post-mistress
of an obscure Welch post-town, unable to decipher the address on a
letter, perceived, on examining it, the folds of several Bank notes
protruding from a torn edge of the envelope. She securely re-enclosed
it to the secretary of the Post-Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand; who
found the contents to be 1500_l._, and the superscription too much
even for the hieroglyphic powers of the ‘blind clerk.’ Eventually the
enclosures found their true destination.
It is estimated that there lies, from time to time, in the Dead-Letter
Office, undergoing the process of finding owners, some 11,000_l._
annually, in cash alone. In July, 1847, for instance—only a two
months’ accumulation—the post-haste of 4658 letters, all containing
property, was arrested by the bad superscriptions of the writers. They
were consigned—after a searching inquest upon each by that efficient
coroner, the ‘blind clerk’—to the Post-Office _Morgue_. There were Bank
notes of the value of 1010_l._, and money-orders for 407_l._ 12_s._
But most of these ill-directed letters contained coin in small sums,
amounting to 310_l._ 9_s._ 7_d._ On the 17th of July, 1847, there were
lying in the Dead-Letter Office bills of Exchange for the immense sum
of 40,410_l._ 5_s._ 7_d._!
‘I assure you,’ said a gentleman high in this department, ‘it is
scarcely possible to take up a handful of letters without finding one
with coin in it, despite the facilities afforded by the money-order
system. All this is very distressing to us. The temptation it throws in
the way of sorters, carriers, and other humble _employés_ is greater
than they ought to be subjected to. Seventy men have been discharged
for dishonesty from the District Office alone during the past two
years.’
‘But the public do use the Money-Order Office extensively?’
This question was startlingly answered by reference to a Parliamentary
Return which showed that there were issued and paid in England and
Wales alone, during the year which ended on the 5th of January, 1849,
6,852,911 Post-office orders for sums amounting to the enormous
aggregate of 13,678,377_l._ 3_s._ 1_d._
Taking up a thin card-board box of artificial flowers, which had been
shaken into the form of an irregular rhomboid, under the pressure of
several pounds’ weight of letters and newspapers, a ‘sub-president’
remarked—‘The faith the public have in us is extraordinary. Here is an
article which is designed to go safely to Dublin; yet not one single
precaution, except this thin piece of twine, is taken by the sender to
ensure its preservation. Here, again, is a pair of white satin shoes,
fast losing their colour from friction with damp newspapers and the
edges of books. The other day the toe of a similar packet protruded
from its very thin casing, and the stamper not being able to stop his
hand in time, ornamented it, in vividly blue ink, with the words,
“York, Feb. 1, 1850, D.” You will see by this Parliamentary Return of
the articles found in the Dead-Letter Office what curious things are
trusted to our care.’
The obliging gentleman then produced the document. Its lists showed,
amongst other articles,—tooth-picks, tooth-files, fishing-flies, an
eye-glass, brad-awls, portraits, miniatures, a whistle, corkscrews,
a silver watch, a pair of spurs, a bridle, a soldier’s discharge and
sailors’ register tickets, samples of hops and corn, a Greek MS.,
silver spoons, gold thread, dinner, theatre, and pawn tickets, boxes
of pills, shirts, night-caps, razors, all sorts of knitting and lace,
‘doll’s things,’ and a vast variety of other articles, that would
puzzle ingenuity to conjecture.
‘Besides carelessness we have to contend against ignorance,’ was
remarked as the visitors were introduced to the ‘blind’ table, and
to the hawk-eyed gentleman who presides at it. ‘He is provided, you
perceive, with a small library of local and general Directories, Court
Guides, Army, Navy, and Clergy Lists; and much he needs them, as
will be seen by these fac-similes.’ Several transcripts of curiously
addressed letters were then produced. ‘Where would you or I have sent a
letter
[Illustration:
For
George Miller
boy on board H M S
Amphirtrite Vallop
a Rayzor or Ellesware
]
certainly not to its proper destination, which turned out to be the
“Amphitrite,” Valparaiso, or elsewhere? Who but our friend here would
have found out that another boy in her Majesty’s naval service said to
be on board
_H.M. Steem Friegkt
Vultur Uncon or els ware_,
belonged to the Steam Frigate Vulture, at Hong Kong? Few would think
that
_Mr. Weston
Osburn Cottage
Ilawait_
was a neighbour of her Majesty, and lived at Osborne Cottage, Isle of
Wight.’
The following additional epistolary puzzles were then read, amidst, as
reporters say, ‘loud laughter:’
_Mr. Laurence
New Land
Ivicum_ (High Wycombe).
_W. Stratton
Commonly
Ceald teapot_
(We presume as a total abstinence man.)
_Weelin_ (Welwyn).
_Thom Hoodless
3 St. Ann Ct
Searhoo Skur_ (Soho Square).
The ingenious orthographies _Ratlifhaivai_ and _Ratlef Fieway_ went
straight to the proper parties in Ratcliffe Highway; but it is a wonder
how—
_Mr. Dick
Bishop Cans
ner the Wises_
got his letter, considering that his place of abode was near Devizes.
For the next specimen of spelling there is some excuse. ‘In England,’
says a French traveller, ‘what they write “Greenwich,” they pronounce
“Grinitch,” and I am not quite sure that when they set down “Solomon,”
they do not pronounce it “Nebuchadnezzar.”’ ‘I much question,’
continued one of the amateur Post-Office inspectors, ‘if either
of us had never seen the name of the place to which the following
superscription applies, that we should not have spelt it nearly
similarly to the correspondent of—
Peter Robertson
2 Compney 7 Batilian
Rolyl Artirian
_Owilige_
England.
‘Although the writer’s ear misled him grievously in the other words,
he has recorded the sound into which we render _Woolwich_ with curious
correctness.’
‘Innocent simplicity baulks us as much as ignorance,’ remarked the head
of the hieroglyphic department. ‘Here are one or two specimens of it:—
_To Mr. Michl
Darcy
In the town of
England._
‘A schoolboy sends from Salisbury,
_To My Uncle Jon
in London._
‘Another addressed the highest personage in the realm—no doubt on
particular business—as
_Miss
Queene Victoria
of England._’
While this amusement was going forward, the bustle in the adjoining
rooms had reached its climax. It was approaching eight o’clock, and
the ‘Miller and his Men’ above stairs were delivering their sacks from
the mouth of the ever-revolving mill at an incessant rate. These,
filled nearly to the mouth with newspapers, were dragged to the tables,
which the brass label fastened to the corner of each bag marked as its
own, to have the letters inserted. Our friends rushed to where they
saw ‘Edinburgh’ painted up on the walls, and there they beheld their
yellow, green, and red letters in separate packets, though destined for
the same place; just as they had come in at first from Fleet Street.
The bundles were popped in a trice into the Edinburgh bag, which was
sealed and sent away. Exactly the same thing was happening to every
bundle of letters, and to every bag on the premises.
The clock now struck eight, and the two visitors looked round in
astonishment. Had they been guests at the ball in ‘Cinderella,’ when
_that_ clock struck they would not have been more astonished; for
hardly less rapidly did the fancy dresses of the postmen disappear,
and the lights grow dim. This is the most striking peculiarity of the
extraordinary establishment. Everything is done on military principles
to minute time. The drill and subdivision of duties are so perfect,
that the alternations throughout the day are high pressure and sudden
collapse. At five minutes before eight the enormous offices were
glaring with light and crowded with men; at ten minutes after eight the
glass slipper had fallen off, and there was hardly a light or a living
being visible.
‘Perhaps, however,’ it was remarked as our friends were leaving the
building, ‘an invisible individual is now stealthily watching behind
the ground glass screen. Only the other day he detected from it a
sorter secreting 140 sovereigns.’
It is a deplorable thing that such a place of observation should be
necessary; but it is hardly less deplorable—and this should be most
earnestly impressed upon the reader—that the public, now possessed of
such conveniences for remitting money, by means of Post-Office Orders
and Registered Letters, should lightly throw temptation in the way of
these clerks, by enclosing actual coin. No man can say that, placed
in such circumstances from day to day, he could be stedfast. Many may
hope they would be, and believe it; but none can be sure. It is in the
power, however, of every conscientious and reflecting mind, to make
quite sure that it has no part in this class of crimes. The prevention
for this one great source of misery is made easy to the public hand;
and it is the public’s bounden duty to adopt it. They who do not,
cannot be blameless.
Such is the substance of information obtained by our friends before
they took leave of the mighty heart of the postal system of this
country.
In conclusion, they beg it to be understood that their experimental
letters were _not_ Valentines.