Being thus hard pressed, and finding himself cornered, he confessed that he had prepared the letter which was received in New Haven—postscript, double wafers and all—before he left home, and that while crossing the street from the bank to the post-office, he substituted this for the one he wrote in the clergyman's study! He promised to send the money, and pretended to have suffered severely in his feelings, on account of this dishonest act.
There is no United States law providing for the punishment of such an offence, but public opinion and private conscience make nicer distinctions than the law can do, and often mete out a well deserved penalty to those who elude the less subtle ministers of justice.
In the present instance, the foregoing story was made public by direction of the Post Master General; and the author of the trick, unable to sustain the indignation and contempt of the community in which he lived, was compelled to make a hasty retreat from that part of the country.
CHAPTER XIII.
Young Offenders—Thirty Years ago—A large Haul—A Ray of Light.
The facts of the following case were furnished me by a gentleman connected with the New York post-office. I will introduce him as the relator of his own story, taking some liberty, however, with the phraseology.
It is one of the too numerous class of cases, of which mere boys are the heroes, (if the term may thus be perverted,)—a class that is represented in this work, which would otherwise be incomplete, professing, as it does, to illustrate the various phases of post-office life, as respects persons of different ages and conditions. The present narration will show that our own times are not the only period fertile in juvenile rascality, but that the youth of thirty years ago were too frequently set upon evil.
At the time when the incidents occurred which I am about to narrate, (viz. in the year 1826,) it was the usual practice in the New York office to make up the morning's mails on the preceding evening, and to place them upon tables before they were entered on the "transcripts," (sheets or books in which copies of the post-bills are made,) and enclosed in wrappers. At this time a boy twelve or thirteen years of age was employed as assistant to one of the letter carriers, and generally arrived at the office at an earlier hour in the morning than the regular clerks. The nature of his duties made him well acquainted with the different species of letters, so that he could determine without much difficulty, from its general appearance, whether a letter contained hidden treasures or not.