by Jack Finney
"The old Post Office now stands deserted and desolate . . ."
Did things improve then, after those marches? Well. Yeah. But unfortunately only locally. Less than a year later Mark Twain shoved aside the work on his desk—which, in July, 1876, could have been checking galleys on Tom Sawyer or drafting the first chapters of Huckleberry Finn. And like many another writer before and since, he goofed off by writing a letter.
"A fortnight ago a citizen of Hartford mailed a letter," he wrote to the Evening Post, "directed to me at this place (Elmira) where I am summering, and inadvertently fell one cent short of full prepayment. The post office authorities held a council of war over it and then sent it to Washington in charge of an artillery regiment, at great cost to the nation. The dead letter department worried over it several days and nights and then wrote me (at a cost of three cents) that I could have my letter for a three-cent stamp or its equivalent in coin. I, like an ass, sent for it, thinking it might contain a legacy, and yesterday it arrived in a man-of-war, at vast expense to the Government, and was brought to these premises by three companies of marines and a mortar battery, all of whom stayed to supper. The letter had nothing in it but a doctor's bill . . . which I did not want and do not value now that I have got it . . . The Postmaster-General was removed from the Cabinet for not collecting storage for the six days that my letter remained in the dead letter office . . ."
Mark Twain then put thirty-nine cents worth of postage on the letter (it needed only three), mailed it off, got back to work on Huck or Tom, and things at the Post Office have been about the same ever since.
Would it help once again; a march by the Manhattan postal staff? Nice to think of them all marching down Sixth Avenue, say, singing, "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter." Even if it didn't improve the service, it would beat raising the rates once again.
Jack Finney is author of a new novel, "Marion's Wall" and an old novel, "Time and Again."
Originally published in The New York Times, December 21, 1973
