P.S.--It's eight-forty-two right now, and I'm gone.
An Arkansas postmaster expressed as follows his delight in his
appointment:
I feel honored, as in duty bound, by my appointment, and am
glad to know, the salary is to be the same as heretofore,
namely, nothing a year; for I'd hate like thunder to pay
anything.
Illiteracy is not uncommon among the postmasters. Mr. Castle quotes a
letter from a Southern ex-postmaster, presumably a negro:
P.M. generall Sir, I have a complaint against the citty of
gilead the police crippled me. In 1901 committ no offense
and the city fathers there humbugged me, and drove me out of
town contrary to the laws of christ, moses, and the profets,
and all nations, tribes, and clans.
So i pray you to lift your finger and do something about it,
i want to get paid for my property. I was up in tenicee to
beg the price of a suit of clows but i am back now and want
them to settle that claim with me.
P.S.--i tried to get before the last Congris and i got in
the workhouse.
And again, here is a letter from a local official who dreads the invasion
of rural free delivery:
Poastmaster General, Sir as this Tock of Rheual free
Delivery has Got up heare and so many is Dissathisfide is
the cause of the Patrishon Being sent you and if you will
Nodes, you will See that Several Names Appear on Boath
Patrishons and About Nine out of Every Ten that Assign for
Rheual Free Delivery Mail Surves is Dissathisfide and doant
want hit and Ses they wars Fool and Lyde in to sign the
Patrishon for Rheual Free Delivery.
The ignorance and illiteracy of these postmasters is not typical. The
cases are really exceptional. Yet there are many official eccentricities.
There is, for example, the old story of postmasters who persistently
peruse private postal cards--and this propensity is so common, or is
supposed to be so common, that it has even been celebrated in verse:
In a village post-office Miss Peek
Had a job at six dollars a week;
But she near had a fit
And threatened to quit
When a postal came written in Greek.