A gloomy Picture—Beautiful Village—Litigation in Harrowfork—A model Post Master—The Excitement—Petitioning the Department—Conflicting Statements—The decisive Blow—The new Post Master—The "Reliable Man"—Indignant Community—Refusal to serve—An Editor's Candidate—The Temperance Question—Newspaper Extracts—A Mongrel Quotation—A Lull—A "Spy in Washington"—Bad Water—New Congressmen—The Question revived—Delegate to Washington—Obliging Down Easter—The lost Letters—Visit to the Department—Astounding Discovery—Amusing Scene—A Congressmen in a "Fix"—The Difficulty "arranged."
There is no blessing bestowed upon us by a kind Providence, which man's selfishness may not pervert into a grievance. We have seen this principle illustrated in the use and abuse of post-offices, as often as in any other civil institution.
How society in the nineteenth century could exist without mail routes and the regular delivery of letters, it is impossible to conceive.
Imagine a town without a post office! a community without letters! "friends, Romans, countrymen, and lovers," particularly the lovers, cut off from correspondence, bereft of newspapers, buried alive from the light of intelligence, and the busy stir of the great world! What an appalling picture!
We have always thought that Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday might have enjoyed a very comfortable existence, had Juan Fernandez been blessed with a post-office. But think of a society of Crusoes and Fridays! nobody receiving letters, nobody writing letters—no watching the mails, no epistolary surprises and enjoyments, which form so large an element in our social life to-day!
But gloomy as the picture appears, we have many times thought that some very respectable and enlightened villages would be decidedly benefited, were the post office stricken from the catalogue of their institutions. This is a bone of contention, which often sets the whole neighborhood by the ears and communities, which might otherwise enjoy the reputation of being regular circles of "brotherly love," break out into quarrels, contentions, slanders, litigations, and all sorts of unchristian disturbances.
The case of the town of Harrowfork, which I find recorded in my note-book, will most capitally illustrate the point under consideration. Harrowfork, by the way, is not the real name of the town, but a fictitious one, which we use for our convenience, to avoid personalities. It is located on the Eastern slope of an eminence, which overlooks one of the fairest of valleys on one of the most beautiful New England streams. The town was once a favorite place of resort with the writer, during the Summer season; and, although this was years ago, the pretty village is still fresh in his memory, with its green hills, its handsome residences embowered in the foliage of trees and vines—its rival churches, with their emulous spires pointing toward heaven; its shady roads, and magnificent prospects, looking far off upon the wide-spread valley, dotted with farmhouses, and beautified by the sinuous, glittering waters of the stream.
Its sunrises were particularly fine, and it has always seemed to me that the poet must have had them in his mind, when he penned the sonnet commencing
| "Full many a glorious morning I have seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye. Kissing with golden face the meadows green. Gilding pale streams with Heavenly alchemy!" |