“Dear Miss:—Well, I have found you at last, thanks to the good postmaster, whose super excellent judgment, I am happy to assure you, is in perfect accord with my own. Now then, the object of dropping you this postal is to open a correspondence with you. Intentions, matrimonial. Satisfaction guaranteed. Write at once, enclosing stamp for photo.
“Yours, presumably,
“John Looper.”
Sometime since several letters were received among the “misdirected,” addressed to Zachary, Marshall Co., Ala. As no trace of such office could be found, a circular of inquiry was sent to the postmaster at Dodsonville, the county seat of Marshall, requesting him, if there was such village, hamlet or settlement in his county, to ascertain its location and inform the Department. His response was both prompt and lucid, as a literal transcription will readily show:
“Sirs i would say in answer to this letter that the settlement of Zachary is about five miles a little w of S in the Tennassee River valley Between Dodsonville and Henreyville the people of that Settlement is furnished with or get ther mail at Dodsonville and Swaringin Zachary has not been known as an office since the war it would furnish more people with mail to move Dry cove back 3 miles to where it was first established when thos Mitchell was P M and discontinued the rout from Dodsonville to Cottenville and run it down the valley to Henreyville and reastablish Zachary but you can use your own pleasure about that
“yours truly
“J D Gross P M”
I have never ascertained whether the Department adopted Mr. Gross’s suggestions. Gratuitous and intelligent information like this was certainly entitled to respectful, if not favorable, consideration.
In the same category with this brilliant ornament of the postal service might be placed the Londoner who addressed the Postmaster General for information concerning his brother “Charles Egar Quinton, who had sailed for America about nine years previously, with the intention of keeping a public house, or an hotel, and had never been heard of since.” Even the “experts” hung their heads in confusion as they pondered the whereabouts of Mr. Quinton, confessing themselves vanquished, unless, indeed, the Department would grant them six months’ leave, “a roving commission” and expenses paid, in which case they would pledge themselves to return the long-lost Charles, dead or alive, to his sorrowing relatives.
To these children of the government any ordinary work, such as calculating an eclipse, taking an astronomical observation, tunneling the Channel, or drawing up a Lasker resolution, would have been an easy and delightful task, and promptly executed, but this search for an unknown quantity still hidden among or long since eliminated from fifty millions was a task too herculean for contemplation.