LITTLE OLD NEW YORK
Monday's mail for the Arrowhead was brought in by the Chinaman while Ma Pettengill and I loitered to the close of the evening meal: a canvas sack of letters and newspapers with three bulky packages of merchandise that had come by parcels post. The latter evoked a passing storm from my hostess. Hadn't she warned folks time and again to send all her stuff by express instead of by parcels post, which would sure get her gunned some day by the stage driver who got nothing extra for hauling such matter? She had so!
We trifled now with a fruity desert and the lady regaled me with a brief exposure of our great parcels-post system as a piece of the nerviest penny pinching she had ever known our Government guilty of. Because why? Because these here poor R.F.D. stage drivers had to do the extra hauling for nothing.
"Here's old Harvey Steptoe with the mail contract for sixty dollars a month, three trips a week between Red Gap and Surprise Valley, forty-five miles each way, barely making enough extra on express matter and local freight to come out even after buying horse-feed. Then comes parcels post, and parties that had had to pay him four bits or a dollar for a large package, or two bits for a small one, can have 'em brought in by mail for nothing. Of course most of us eased up on him after we understood the hellish injustice of it. We took pains not to have things sent parcels post and when they come unbeknown to us, like these here to-night, we'd always pay him anyway, just like they was express. It was only fair and, besides, we would live longer, Harvey Steptoe being morose and sudden.
"Like when old Safety First Timmins got the idea he could have all his supplies sent from Red Gap for almost nothing by putting stamps on 'em. He was tickled to death with the notion until, after the second load of about a hundred pounds, some cowardly assassin shot at him from the brush one morning about the time the stage usually went down past his ranch. The charge missed him by about four inches and went into the barn door. He dug it out and found a bullet and two buckshot. Old Safety First ain't any Sherlock Holmes, but even Doctor Watson could of solved this murderous crime. When Harvey come by the next night he went out and says to him, 'Ain't you got one of them old Mississippi Yaegers about seventy-five years old that carries a bullet and two buckshot?' Harvey thought back earnestly for a minute, then says,'Not now I ain't. I used to have one of them old hairlooms around the house but I found they ain't reliable when you want to do fine work from a safe distance; so I threw her away yesterday morning and got me this nice new 30-30 down to Goshook & Dale's hardware store.'
"He pulled the new gun out and patted it tenderly in the sight of old Timmins. 'Ain't it a cunning little implement?' he says; 'I tried it out coming up this afternoon. I could split a hair with it as far, say, as from that clump of buck-brush over to your barn. And by the way, Mr. Timmins,' he says, 'I got some more stuff for you here from the Square Deal Grocery—stuff all gummed up with postage stamps.' He leans his new toy against the seat and dumps out a sack of flour and a sack of dried fruit and one or two other things. 'This parcels post is a grand thing, ain't it?' says he.
"'Well—yes and no, now that you speak of it,' says old Safety First. 'The fact is I'm kind of prejudiced against it; I ain't going to have things come to me any more all stuck over with them trifling little postage stamps. It don't look dignified.' 'No?' says Harvey. 'No,' says Safety First in a firm tone. 'I won't ever have another single thing come by mail if I can help it.' 'I bet you're superstitious,' says Harvey, climbing back to his seat and petting the new gun again. 'I bet you're so superstitious you'd take this here shiny new implement off my hands at cost if I hinted I'd part with it.' 'I almost believe I would,' says Safety First. 'Well, it don't seem like I'd have much use for it after all,' says Harvey. 'Of course I can always get a new one if my fancy happens to run that way again.'
"So old Safety First buys a new loaded rifle that he ain't got a use on earth for. It would of looked to outsiders like he was throwing his money away on fripperies, but he knew it was a prime necessity of life all right. The parcels post ain't done him a bit of good since, though I send him marked pieces in the papers every now and then telling how the postmaster general thinks it's a great boon to the ultimate consumer. And I mustn't forget to send Harvey six bits for them three packages that come to-night. That's what we do. Otherwise, him being morose and turbulent, he'd get a new gun and make ultimate consumers out of all of us. Darned ultimate! I reckon we got a glorious Government, like candidates always tell us, but a postmaster general that expected stage drivers to do three times the hauling they had been doing with no extra pay wouldn't last long out at the tail of an ... route. There'd be pieces in the paper telling about how he rose to prominence from the time he got a lot of delegates sewed up for the people's choice and how his place will be hard to fill. It certainly would be hard to fill out here. Old Timmins, for one, would turn a deaf ear to his country's call."
Lew Wee having now cleared the table of all but coffee, we lingered for a leisurely overhauling of the mail sack. Ma Pettengill slit envelopes and read letters to an accompanying rumble of protest. She several times wished to know what certain parties took her for—and they'd be fooled if they did; and now and again she dwelt upon the insoluble mystery of her not being in the poorhouse at that moment; yes, and she'd of been there long ago if she had let these parties run her business like they thought they could. But what could a lone defenceless woman expect? She'd show them, though! Been showing 'em for thirty years now, and still had her health, hadn't she?
Letters and bills were at last neatly stacked and the poor weak woman fell upon the newspapers. The Red Gap Recorder was shorn of its wrapper. Being first a woman she turned to the fourth page to flash a practised eye over that department which is headed "Life's Stages—At the Altar—In the Cradle!—To the Tomb." Having gleaned recent vital statistics she turned next to the column carrying the market quotations on beef cattle, for after being a woman she is a rancher. Prices for that day must have pleased her immensely for she grudgingly mumbled that they were less ruinous than she had expected. In the elation of which this admission was a sign she next refreshed me with various personal items from a column headed "Social Gleanings—by Madame On Dit."