EVASION OF THE POST-OFFICE LAWS.
Before the adoption of the present rates of postage, much ingenuity
was displayed in making newspapers the vehicles of such information as
should legitimately have been conveyed by letters. Various devices
were employed to effect this object.
As the law strictly prohibited writing upon papers, requiring that
such newspapers should be charged with letter postage, the problem
was, to convey information by their means without infringing the
letter of the law.
Sometimes a sentence or a paragraph was selected, some of the letters
of which were crossed out in such a manner that the letters left
legible conveyed the meaning which the operator intended. By such
transmuting process, pugnacious editorials were converted into
epistles of the mildest and most affectionate description, and public
news of an important character not unfrequently contracted into a
channel for the conveyance of domestic intelligence.
As the constructions of the law on this subject, by the officers of
the Department, became more and more stringent, the most amusing and
ingenious inventions to get beyond their reach were resorted to.
For instance, marking an advertisement or other notice, with a pen or
pencil, having been declared a violation of law, attention was
sometimes called to such notices, by cutting round them on three
sides, thus making a sort of flap, and doubling it back on the side
left uncut. In one case, which now occurs to the author, a notice
served in that way, thus producing a hole in the paper, had the
strikingly appropriate caption of "A good Opening!"
The vacancy produced in the paper, in such a case, of course attracted
the attention of the person who received it, and _that_ advertisement
was sure to be read, if no other.
Hieroglyphics were sometimes employed for conveying contraband ideas.
The following will answer as a specimen of this class of attempted
evasions. It was neatly drawn on the margin of a newspaper which came
to a Western post-office, from a town in New England.
[Illustration]
The meaning will of course he readily understood by the
reader--"Children all well!"
Such specimens of the fine arts are seldom attempted under the present
low rates of postage, as the saving of two cents would hardly pay for
the required time or labor. But there are those even now-a-days, who,
for that paltry consideration, are found willing to compromise their
consciences, if indeed they have any, by resorting to some of the less
laborious methods, in attempting to carry out their prudential
designs.