“Too bad! too bad!” exclaimed Ephraim. “Everything conspires to delay me to-day. I suppose I must sit here and wait for that lazy letter-carrier to come, and meantime my business must wait too.”
With the intent not to lose the time altogether, Ephraim resolved to write a letter or two. He took from the drawer a sheet of rough white paper, and opened his inkstand. He could not find his favorite steel pen anywhere, and there were no other pens in the drawer, only a bundle of quills. Ephraim determined to try to use one of these. He ruined four, and lost ten minutes before he could make with his knife a pen good enough to write with; but with this he finished his letter. Then he had another hunt for an envelope, but he could find one nowhere, and nothing was to be done but to fold the sheet in the fashion that he had known in his boyhood, and to seal it with sealing-wax. He burned his fingers badly while performing the last-named operation.
Still the postman had not arrived, and Ephraim, being very anxious to mail his letter, resolved to go out and drop it into the letter-box at the corner of the street. When he reached the corner, he found that the letter-box had disappeared as so many other things had done; so he resolved to push on to the post-office, where he could leave the letter and get his morning’s mail. As he approached what he had supposed was the post-office, he was dismayed to perceive that another building occupied the site. The post-office had vanished.
He turned to a man standing with a crowd which was observing him, and asked him where the post-office could be found. Obeying the direction, he sought the place and found it. Rushing to the single window, behind which a clerk stood, he asked,—
“Are there any letters for Ephraim Batterby?”
“I think not,” said the clerk; “there will be no mail in till to-morrow.”
“Till to-morrow!” shouted Ephraim. “What is the matter?”
“The matter! nothing at all. What’s the matter with you?”
“I am expecting letters from New York and Chicago. Are both mails delayed?”
“Chicago’s a place I never heard of, and the mail from New York comes in only three times a week. It came yesterday, and it will come in to-morrow.”