No sir-ree. Dr. Wilkinson is too smart for that. Experience has taught him that the average man does not like to have his friends and neighbors know that he is corresponding with a strange doctor. Hence the “sent-securely-sealed-in-plain-package tactics.”
It’s different in a big town or city where the facilities for becoming acquainted with the nature of a man’s correspondence do not exist, and the rush of business is so great that even postal cards go through the mails unread by any one except the sender and the receiver.
But in the rural districts where Absalom Squash and Praise-it-all Tompkins assist Hiram Gaylord in his duties as postmaster to the extent of closely inspecting every letter that comes in or goes out—why that’s another story.
“Wonder what John Peters is writing to that fellow in Chicago erbout?” says Absalom Squash as he picks up the letter addressed to G. H. Wilkinson and holds it up to the light in a vain effort to get an inkling as to the contents. But this Wilkinson chap is wise. He has provided an extra heavy envelope, white on the exterior, but blue coated inside, to thwart just such efforts. Against the postal regulations for anybody outside of the postmaster or his sworn assistants to handle the mail? Of course it is. But this regulation is a dead one in nearly every small post office in the country.
When Mr. Squash goes home he reports to Samantha that “John Peters is writin’ to that Chicago fellow again. John had a letter from Chicago day before yesterday, and to-day he sent off the answer, but he didn’t write the address himself.”
“How’d you know ’twas from Peters, then?”
“’Cause his boy brought it to the office,” answers Absalom triumphantly.
Samantha is interested and runs over to her friend Abigail Simpkins to discuss the strange occurrence. That they are unable to do more than enjoy a little idle gossip is owing to the lack of any clew on the envelope as to the nature of the business or occupation of the party addressed.
In this feature Dr. Wilkinson’s plan is a good one. In corresponding with patients or prospective patients use plain envelopes, or if some safeguard in the matter of return is desired, use a post-office card in the corner such as “If not delivered in five days return to Box ——, Chicago Post Office.” Nothing more. Should anybody make an effort to ascertain who has rented this particular box in Chicago, or any other city of decent size, he will be politely told by the postal officials that it is none of his business.
Sometimes the parties addressed die before the letter reaches them. In cases of this kind the return card in the corner of the envelope serves a good purpose. It is the duty of the postmaster to return it to the address given in the card marked “Party dead.” When this happens the correspondence chief takes the card from the file and destroys it. There is no use wasting time, stationery and postage on dead ones.