Overland Tales

by Josephine Clifford

  _DOWN AMONG THE DEAD LETTERS._

  Strangers visiting Washington, and admiring the style and architectureof the General Post-Office building, would never know that there arenumbers of ladies seated behind the plate-glass of the second-storywindows. Indeed, few people residing in the capital are really aware inwhat part of the building those female clerks are stowed away. I hadpassed on every side of the building--morning, noon, and night--butnever had seen anybody that looked like a "female clerk," till I foundmyself of their number, one morning; and then I discovered the rightentrance to the Dead Letter Office. It is on F street, so close to theLadies' Delivery that any person entering here would be supposed to beinquiring for a letter at that delivery. There is another entrance on Estreet, but it is not much patronized by the ladies until after fifteenminutes past nine o'clock; for punctually at that time, the door-keeperis instructed to lock the ladies' door on F street, and those who aretardy are compelled to go up the gentlemen's staircase, or pass in atthe large public entrance on E street. Crowds of visitors walk throughthe building, day after day, but not one of all the ladies employed heredo they see, unless they request to be shown the rooms of the female_employes_.

  In this department, working hours are from nine o'clock in the morningtill three o'clock in the afternoon. Ladies are not allowed to leave theoffice for lunch, nor do they waste much time in discussing the lunchthey may have brought, as it is only in consideration of their industryand close application that they are allowed to leave the office atthree o'clock, instead of four.

  This Dead Letter Office is one of the most complicated pieces ofmachinery in the "ship of state." I will try to explain and elucidate asmuch of it as came under my observation. Letters left "uncalled for" atthe different post-offices throughout the country are sent to the DeadLetter Office, after a certain length of time. Letters not prepaid, orshort-paid, through neglect or ignorance of the writer, also find theirway here; and so do foreign letters, from all parts of Europe, whichhave been prepaid only in part, and therefore come here, instead ofreaching their destination. Sometimes mails are robbed, and themail-bags hidden or thrown away, but are afterwards searched for, andtheir remaining contents brought to this office. Then again, a vessel atsea, homeward-bound, brings letters from ships meeting it, of sailorsand passengers, who send their letters in firm faith that they willreach their anxious friends at home; but if our Government happens tohave no treaty or contract with that particular government to which thewriter belongs, of course, the letters cannot be forwarded, but are laidat rest here. These letters are carefully preserved for a number ofyears. They are sometimes called for, and found, a long, long time afterthey were written; in fact, only "dead" letters are destroyed.

  Though I wish to speak more particularly of the duties and laborperformed by the ladies employed in this department, I must begin bysaying that all letters pass through the hands of, and are opened by, anumber of gentlemen--clerks in the department--whose room is on theground floor of the building. A great number of letters contain money,valuable papers, and postage stamps. These are sent to thesuperintendent's room. Letters without contents are folded, with theenvelope laid inside the letter, tied in bundles, and sent up-stairsfor directing. Money, drafts, and postage-stamps, however, are not theonly articles considered "mailable matter" by the public. One day Ilooked over a box filled with such matter, taken from dead letters andparcels in the opening room, and found in it one half-worn gaiter boot,two hair-nets, a rag doll-baby, minus the head and one foot, a set ofcheap jewelry, a small-sized frying-pan, two ambrotypes, one pair ofwhite kid gloves, a nursing-bottle, a tooth-brush, a boot-jack, threeyards of lace, a box of Ayer's pills, a bunch of keys, six nutmegs, atoddy-stick, and no end of dress samples. This matter is allowed toaccumulate for three months, and is then sold at auction; but a registeris so carefully kept, that the person mailing the doll-baby withoutprepaying can follow its progress from the little country town where itwas mailed to the end of its career under the hammer at the Dead LetterOffice, and here can claim the amount it brought at auction.

  Every clerk, male or female, has his or her letter, from A to Z, andbeginning again with A A, when the alphabet "runs out." Before theladies take their places at the desk in the morning, the messenger hasalready placed there the number of envelopes each lady is expected todirect in the course of the day; and large baskets filled with bundlesof letters, sent up from the opening room (the bundles marked with theletter of the clerk through whose hands they have passed), are broughtinto the rooms. The envelopes are stamped in one corner with the lady'sletter, in red; so that the ladies are spoken of, by the superintendentor the messengers, as Miss A, B, C, D--not as Miss Miller, or Mrs.Smith. Fifty of these envelopes are contained in one package, so that itis easy to calculate whether any of them are wasted by misdirecting orblotting. The work looks simple enough, when you see a number of ladiesseated at their desks, writing addresses on envelopes, with the greatestapparent ease. "And then," as a gushing young lady said to me one day,"how romantic it must be to listen to the outpourings of love andaffection that these letters must contain in many cases, and the darksecrets that others disclose." She thought it rather a cruel restraint,when I told her we were allowed to read only so much of a letter as wasnecessary to discover the name of the writer, and to read no part of it,if the name was signed clearly and distinctly at the end. Let the ladyreader pause a moment and ask herself, "Do I sign my letters so that oneof these clerks could return them from the Dead Letter Office, withoutgoing over the whole of their contents?" By the time you have finishedreading this paper, I hope you will have formed the resolution to signyour name "in full," and just as it is, to every letter you send by themail. Don't sign your name "Saida," when it is really Sarah Jones "infull;" and if you call your father's brick house on Third street, "PineGrove," because there are two dry pine-trees in the front yard, don'tneglect to add "No. 24, Third Street, Cincinnati, Ohio." The greaternumber of letters passing through this office are badly written anduninteresting; many of them so perfectly unintelligible that no humanbeing can read or return them; not that the greater portion of ourcommunity are uneducated or unintelligent people, but that they areeither reckless or careless. Letters directed with any kind of commonsense are most always sure of reaching their destination withoutvisiting the Dead Letter Office. Not only do people, in a number ofcases, neglect to prepay their letters, but frequently, letters withoutdirection or address of any kind are dropped into the letter-boxes. Inwriting to individuals residing in the same city with them, people thinkit is necessary only to mention the name of the individual; the"post-office man" is expected to know that the letter is not to go outof the city. The post-office people are, if not omniscient, at leastvery obliging. I have found a letter directed to "Carrolton, inAmerica," and the letter had been forwarded to, and bore the post-markof every Carrolton in the United States before it was sent here.

  The work of the ladies falls under two heads: "Common" and "Special." Wewill get the best idea of what "Common" means, in contradistinction to"Special," by watching Miss A, on "Common" work this morning. Taking oneof the bundles of letters from the basket, she opens it and takes up thetop letter; spreading it on the desk, she finds the envelope inside; itis directed to "William Smith, Philadelphia, Penn.," and the words"uncalled for," stamped on the envelope, show why it was sent here. Now,the signature is to be looked for: it is here--"John Jones;" next, wherewas it dated?--"Somerville, Ohio;" but does the post-mark on theenvelope correspond with that? Yes, it is post-marked from where it wasdated; so, "John Jones" will receive his letter back again: his friend,"W. Smith," may have left Philadelphia, or may have died. "John Jones'"letter is returned to him in a coarse, brown "P. O. D." envelope,stamped with the letter A in one corner, and he pays three cents for theprivilege of knowing that his friend "Smith" never received his letter.The next is a delicate pink affair, dated, "White Rose Bower"--signed,"Ella;" "only this, and nothing more;" so the letter is hopelessly dead,and thrown into the p
aper-basket at Miss A's side. The epistle followingthis is signed, "Henry Foster," and could be returned if it had not beendated at "White Hall" and post-marked "Harrisburg." On looking over thePost-office Directory, we may or may not find a White Hall inPennsylvania, but there is nothing in the letter to show whether "HenryFoster's" home is in Harrisburg or White Hall; consequently, that letteris dead, too. Here is one, signed plainly and legibly, but the writerhas omitted to date it from any particular place. From the tone of theletter, it is plainly to be seen that he lives where the letter wasmailed--but where was it mailed? The post-mark on the envelope is soindistinct that any lady not employed in the Dead Letter Office wouldthrow it aside as "unreadable;" but ladies here learn to decipher whatto ordinary mortals would be hieroglyphic, or simply a blank. Afterconsulting the pages of the Post-office Directory beside her, Miss Apasses the envelope to Miss B. "Can you suggest any post-office inIndiana beginning with M, ending with L, with about four lettersbetween?" Miss B scrutinizes the envelope closely. "The post-mark is notfrom Ind. (Indiana), it is from Ioa" (Iowa), is her decision. Misses C,D, and E, at work in the same room, differ in opinion, and at last MissA steps across the hall to the room of the lady superintendent, where a"blue-book" is kept, and, with the assistance of this lady and the book,Miss A discovers the place in Indiana, directs the letter, and continuesher work. When she has directed fifty letters, she ties them (with bothenvelopes--the "P. O. D." and original one--inside each letter)carefully together, and the messenger carries them into thefolding-room, where other ladies, employed in this branch, fold and sealthem. Of these "Common" letters, every lady is required to direct fromtwo hundred to three hundred a day--a task by no means easy toaccomplish.

  "Special" work is generally disliked by the ladies, and is of a somewhat"mixed" character. Letters held for postage--consequently not"dead"--come under this head. They, too, are sent back to the writer, ifthe signature can be found, and the place from which they are datedcorresponds with the post-mark; if not, they are assorted according toletter and put away into "pigeon-holes," marked with the lettercorresponding. Foreign letters, such as I spoke of before, come underthis head, too. Then there are official letters--in relation to militaryand judicial matters--short-paid, and, therefore, brought before thistribunal. These require minute attention, as three and four documentsare inclosed in one envelope sometimes, making it difficult to discoverwho is the proper person to return them to. Again, there are letterswith postage-stamps to be returned, and money letters containing notover one dollar: those with larger amounts are directed in thesuperintendent's room. Ladies directing stamp and money letters keepaccount of them in a book, submitted, together with the letters, to thesuperintendent, at the close of office hours, every day. Money lettersare marked with red stars, stamp letters with blue. Stamps taken fromdead letters are destroyed by the proper authorities. Then, there iscopying to do--orders and circulars, rules and regulations, to betransmitted to the different local post-offices; and translations to bemade of communications received from foreign post departments. All thisis "Special" work. A large proportion of the letters passing through theoffice are German letters--some French, Italian, Norwegian, and Spanish;but two German clerks are constantly employed, while one clerk caneasily attend to the letters of all the other different nationalitiestogether.

  Sometimes it comes to pass that the superintendent visits one room orthe other, with a number of letters in his hand; these have beenmisdirected or badly written. The red letter stamped on each letterguides him to the desk of the lady who has directed it; and verysensitive is each and every lady to the slightest reproach or reprimandreceived, because of the universal kindness and respect with which theyare treated by all the officials with whom they come in contact.

  If the task of poring over these epistles of all kinds, day after day,is, on the whole, tiresome and wearing, there are certainly manyincidents to relieve the tedium of the occupation. Incidents, I say;letters, I should say. The deep respect we entertain for a well-knownarmy officer was justified to me by the insight his own letters gave meinto his character. It is against the rules of the post-officedepartment to read any part of a letter, unless it is necessary to do soin order to discover the correct address of the writer; but, as thegeneral's handwriting is a little hasty and peculiar, and his militaryhonors and titles were not appended to these letters I speak of, it wasnatural that they should be read by the clerks, in order to ascertainwhether they could be returned to the place they were written from. Oneof these letters had been written to an old lady (I judged so from thefact of his inquiring about her son and grand-children) somewhere in theSouth, who, it appeared, had entertained the general at her house, oneday during the war, when the general was very much in want of a dinnerto eat. He had not forgotten her kindness and hospitality, though it wasnow after the close of the war; but the old lady had probably removedfrom the little village to which the letter was directed, or, perhaps,she had died: so the letter came into our hands, and was returned to thegeneral. Another was to an old friend of the general's. They had playedtogether as boys, perhaps, but his friend had not risen to fame andfortune, like himself; he was giving words to his deep sympathy with amisfortune or bereavement that had befallen his friend--sympathyexpressed with such tender, true feeling, that we felt as though it wereanother bereavement that he should have lost this letter of thegeneral's.

  The remark was often made among us that the Dead Letter Office affordedthe very best opportunities for making collections of autographs ofcelebrated people--only the authorities could not be made to see it inthat light. It was always with a sigh of regret, I must confess, thatletters signed by such names as Bancroft, Whittier, Beecher, Grant,Greeley, were returned to their rightful owners. The most interestingaccounts of foreign travel were sometimes contained in the deadletters--accounts more interesting than any book ever published. Thesewere, as a general thing, written by ladies--and that sealed their doom.Gentlemen writing letters almost always sign their full name; but a ladywill write a dozen pages, telling her friends all about the Louvre andthe Tuileries, the Escurial and London Tower, in one long letter, andthen sign Kate, or Lillie, at the end, thus precluding all possibilityof having her letter returned, though we know from it that she hasreturned to her home in Boston. It is almost incredible what a largenumber of letters passing through our hands are "finished off" by thatclassically beautiful verse--"My pen is bad, my ink is pale; my love foryou will never fail"--and it is impossible to believe in how manydifferent ways and styles these touching lines can be written andspelled, till you find them dished up to you a dozen times a day, inthis office. Eastern people don't appreciate this "pome" as Westernfarmers do. Missouri rustics are particularly addicted to it. What thepredilection of the Southern people might have been, I cannot say; itwas just after the close of the war, and their letters were pitifulenough. Of course there was not a Federal postage-stamp to be had in anyof the Southern States; and no matter how deeply the contents of some ofthese letters affected us, we could not forward them to the people theywere addressed to. These letters from the South portrayed so terriblytrue the bitter, abject poverty of all classes, at that time, that theNortherners to whom they were written would not have hesitated to assistthese friends of "better days," could they have received the letters;but, even had we been allowed to forward them, the chances wereextremely slender that people were still in the same position andlocation after the war as before the war.

  Not these letters alone were sad; for sometimes a whole drama could beread from one or two short letters. One day we found among the deadletters a note written in a feeble, scrawling hand. It was by a boy, aprisoner and sick, in one of the penal institutions of New York--sick,poor fellow! and imploring his mother--oh, so piteously!--to come andsee him. He was in the sick ward, he said, and if he _had_ been wicked,and had struck at his step-father when he saw him abuse his mother,would she not come to see him, only once, for all that? She must not lethis step-father prevent her from coming; he was dre
aming of his motherand sister every night, and he knew his mother would come to him; butshe must come soon, for the doctor had said so. Perhaps the letter hadnot reached the mother because the step-father had taken her out of theson's reach; for, in the course of a day or two, we found another letteraddressed to the same woman, by one of the prison officials: the boy,Charley, had died on such a date--about a week after his letter had beenwritten--and he had looked and asked for his mother to the last.

  About letters written by German people I have noticed one peculiarity:they never omit to write the number of the year in some part of theletter, or on the envelope, outside. Sometimes it is written where thename of the country or the State should be found on the envelope, sothat the direction would read, "Jacob Schmied, St. Louis, 1865;" or theywrite it at the bottom of the letter, instead of signing their name, andthen write their name at the beginning of the letter, as though theywere writing the letter to themselves. Everything is heavy and clumsyabout their letters; they never indulge in joke or sentiment; andthrough the negligence of one of the German clerks, the most serioustrouble had almost been brewed in a German brewer's family, at one time.It happened in this way:

  A substantial German brewer had written to Hans Biersoeffel, dunning himfor money, owing on several barrels of _lager_. Hans must have left thecity--at any rate, the letter came to our office, and was returned tothe brewer; but, unfortunately, a very sentimental letter, containing acopy of some love-sick verses, written by a German lady, and held in theoffice as a curiosity for a little while, had (by mistake, of course)found its way into this letter. The honest Dutchman had meant to returnthis piece of property to our office at the first opportunity, andtherefore carried it in his pocket-book, where his wife discovered it,seized it, and held it over his head, as the sword of Damocles, foreverafter--as he could not prove to her satisfaction that the letter andverses had _not_ been sent to _him_ by the writer.

  At the time I belonged to the corps of dead letter clerks, there werethree rooms fronting on Seventh street, fitted up as offices for thelady clerks, and one very large room on the other side of the hall. Astraw mat was spread on the stone floor in our room; one office-chairwas furnished for each lady, and desks barely large enough for twoladies to work at, without elbowing each other; and in one corner,wash-stand and water. In the large room some twenty ladies were writing,while four or five folders had their desk in the same room. Of the otherrooms, one was occupied by the lady superintendent, together with whomwere from four to six ladies; the next room also accommodated sixladies, and the last one, which had the look of a prison, from a highgrating running through it, afforded room for four others. There wereold Post-office Directories, boxes containing printed matter, and suchlike valuables, kept behind this grating; and one day, when a party ofsightseers came unasked into our room, the youngest lady there--whosespirit had not yet been broken by the weight of the responsibilitiesresting on her shoulders--explained to the gaping crowd that behind thisgrating were kept the silver and household furniture of General----,--the assistant postmaster--boxed up, while he was recruiting inthe country. This was a twofold revenge, the young lady said to us: itwas punishing the visitors for their inquisitiveness, and "old ----" forhaving the grating put up there. Several years have passed since I lastsaw the post-office building; the ladies of room No. -- were thenpetitioning to have this grating removed. Whether their petition wasgranted, I have not learned.