I cannot, indeed, claim for this corps of officials entire immaculacy. Could I justly do so, they would be vastly superior in this respect to mankind at large. But without setting up any such high pretensions, I would suggest that those connected with the post-office receive a greater share of blame for failures in the transmission of letters than justly belongs to them. Many people seem to think that nobody can commit a blunder, or be guilty of dishonesty in matters connected with the mails, but post masters or their employés.
Acting on this impression, such persons, when anything goes wrong in their correspondence, do not stop to ascertain whether the fault may not be nearer home, but at once make an onslaught upon the luckless post-office functionary who is supposed to be the guilty one.
The investigation of some such unfounded charges, resulting in placing the fault where it belonged, has brought to light curious and surprising facts, respecting the atrocious blunders sometimes committed by the most accurate and methodical business men. Such men have been known to send off letters with no address, or a wrong one; and even (as in one case which will be found in this chapter) to persist in attempting to send a letter wrongly directed. They have been known to mislay letters, and then to be ready to swear that they had been mailed. The blame of these and similar inadvertencies has been laid, of course, upon somebody connected with the post-office.
Mr. A. is a man of business habits; he never makes such mistakes, and indignantly repudiates the idea that any one in his employ could be thus delinquent. So the weight of his censure falls on the much-enduring shoulders of a post-office clerk.
Besides the class of cases to which I have alluded, which arise from nothing worse than carelessness or stupidity, many instances occur in which the attempt is made by dishonest persons to escape detection, by throwing the blame of their villany upon post-office employés. Cases like the following are not uncommon.
A merchant sends his clerk or errand-boy to mail a letter containing money. This messenger rifles it, reseals it, and deposits it in the letter box. On the receipt of the letter by the person to whom it is addressed, the robbery comes to light; and, as the merchant is naturally slow to believe in the dishonesty of his messenger, he at once jumps at the conclusion that the theft was committed after the letter entered the post-office. In such cases, and in those of which I have been speaking, it would be well to establish the rule that scrutiny, like charity, should "begin at home."
Letters are sometimes mailed purporting to contain money for the payment of debts—when in fact they contain none—with the intention of making it appear that they have been robbed in their passage through the mails. In short, the cases are numberless in which, through inadvertence or design, censure is unjustly thrown upon the employés of the post-office; and the investigations of this class of cases forms no unimportant branch of the duties of a Special Agent.
It has been the pleasing duty of the author, in not a few instances, to relieve an honest and capable official from the load of suspicion with which he was burdened, by discovering, often in an unexpected quarter, where the guilt lay.
THE BITER BIT.