The following instance will illustrate this.
Before the passage of the late Postal Treaty with Great Britain, a clerk in one of our large cities was sent to the post-office to mail a letter, containing an order for goods on an English house. The clerk pocketed the twenty-four cents which he had been intrusted with for the purpose of pre-paying the letter; therefore agreeably to the postal arrangements then existing, it could not go by steamer, but was sent by a sailing vessel.
Consequently the order was delayed, and therefore was not executed as promptly as the firm sending it had expected; and when the goods arrived they had fallen in value to such an extent, that the firm in question incurred by the operation a loss estimated at at least ten thousand dollars.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Post Masters as Directories—Novel Applications—The Butter Business.
A Thievish Family—"Clarinda" in a City—Decoying with Cheese—Post Master's Response.
A Truant Husband—Woman's Instinct.
Editors are supposed by many to be walking encyclopedias, with the record of the entire range of human knowledge inscribed on the tablets of their brains; and there are those who in like manner seem to consider post masters as living Directories, able at short notice to inform any one who chooses to ask, where Smith lives, and what business Jones is in, or what is the price of guano, (an inquiry actually made by letter, of a New York post master.)