"Then, madam, I will take the liberty to inform you that your husband is the person on whom you ought to expend your indignation. He has, at different times, taken several of your letters from the office, opened and read them, and after resealing, returned them to the letter box, having made certain discoveries in those letters, to which he forced me to listen, as furnishing sufficient ground for his course, and justifying former suspicions! He earnestly requested me never to disclose who had opened the letters, and I should have continued to observe secrecy, had not your accusation forced me to this disclosure in self-defence. If you wish to have my statement corroborated, I think I can produce a reliable witness."
The lady did not reply to this proposition, but made a precipitate retreat, leaving the clerk master of the field, and was never afterwards seen at that post-office.
In the summer of 1854, among the complaints of missing letters made at the New York post-office, was one referring to a letter written by a young lawyer of that city, directed as was claimed, to a party in Newark, N. J. Enclosed was the sum of twenty-five dollars in bank-notes.
The writer of the letter was annoyed by the circumstance, to an unusual degree, and caused a severe notice of censure upon the Post-Office Department, to be inserted in one of the leading New York journals. A formal certificate was also drawn up, duly sworn to, and forwarded to Washington.
It read as follows:—
State of New York.
City and County of New York, ss.
John B. C——, of said city, Counsellor at Law, being duly sworn, doth depose and say that on the 19th day of July instant, he enclosed the sum of $25 in a letter addressed to Capt. John M——, Newark. N. J., and deposited the same in the post-office in the city of New York. That the said enclosure and deposit of the letter was made in the presence of one of the principal clerks of the said post-office, whose attention deponent particularly called to the fact at the time. That deponent is informed, and believes that the said clerk's name is John Hallet.
Sworn before me this
10th day of August, 1854.
(Signed) Henry H. M——,
Comr. of Deeds.
The complainant was visited by the Special Agent, and the bare suggestion that the failure might have been owing to some error in the address of the letter, was received with much indignation. He didn't do business in that way, and the post-office and its clerks couldn't cover up their carelessness or dishonesty, by any such inventions.