Letters containing anything, of the smallest value, are saved and registered under their different heads. Money, jewels, drafts, money-orders, receipts, hair, seeds, deeds, military-papers, pension-papers, etc., are all recorded and returned, if possible. A “money letter” has five different records before it leaves the Dead-Letter Office, and is so checked and counter-checked as to make collusion or abstraction almost impossible, in case any soul who surveyed it were fatally tempted.
When the opener of a letter finds money, he immediately makes a record of it. The next morning, the head of “the Opening Table” records in a book each letter found and recorded by each opener the day before. The letters are then taken from a safe, in which they were locked the night previous, and their contents recounted, to make sure of absolute correctness, before leaving the Opening Table. The money-letters, with the record of that day, are then handed over to the head of the Money Branch, where the letters recorded by the head of the Opening Table are certified and receipted. They are next indexed and delivered to the several clerks of the Money Branch, each receipting every letter he has recorded on the Index Book. He then records the letter and sends it to the writer, through the postmaster of the place where the party lives. The owner, on receiving the money, receipts for the same on a blank accompanying the letter, which he sends back to the Dead-Letter Office. The letters are again re-examined by two clerks, to see if the amounts are correct, who conjointly scrutinize and seal the letters. They are then registered to the different distributing offices, with all the precautionary checks of a registered letter. In time, the letter or a receipt from the owner, through the postmaster, is returned. If a receipt is received, it is recorded, with date, as a final disposition of the letter. If the money is returned, it is so noted and recorded on a separate record kept for the purpose, that record showing, perpetually, how much money is on hand. If not claimed at the end of three months, the money is deposited in the Treasury of the United States, subject to the application of the owner. By this minute and exhaustive routine, every money-letter, and every cent which they contain, is absolutely accounted for—traced, refunded, and held.
Drafts, deeds, checks, power-of-attorney and wills are recorded, and sent through postmasters to their owners, they returning receipts for the same.
Foreign letters are assorted, the amounts due this and other countries recorded, and a system of accounts kept, showing, by a list returned with the letters, a correct statement. Foreign letters are returned weekly, to England, Germany and the Netherlands. The liberal postage recently adopted by these countries has opened so large a correspondence, it involves more frequent returns.
The Property-Branch is of a most miscellaneous character. It involves the recording and returning of jewellery, and of almost every other article under the sun. Many of these it is impossible to return. These accumulate in such vast piles, it is necessary to dispose of them at auction, at least, as often as once in four years.
At each sale, a complete catalogue of the articles is presented, and the proceeds are deposited in the United States Treasury.
A room, leading from the Dead-Letter Office, lined with closed closets to its lofty ceiling, is the receptacle of all these stranded treasures. When the custodian unlocks their doors and you behold what is shut within, you are lost in wonder as to what must be the conceived capacity of the Post-Office in the minds of your compatriots. Before your eyes, crammed into shelves, you see patchwork quilts, under garments, and outer garments; hats, caps, and bonnets; shoes and stockings; with no end of nicknacks and keepsakes; “sets” of embroidery, baby-wardrobes, watches, and jewels of every description—though the greater proportion is of the “fire-gilt,” “dollar-store” description. Many really beautiful pictures are retained, because not sufficiently prepaid. Some of these, sent as gifts, are left by the chosen recipients to be sold at auction—the postage often amounting to far more than the value of the picture. Many motley articles peer forth from their hiding-places ignominiously “franked,” yet retained, the frank not being sufficient legal-tender to insure their triumphal passage to the place of final destination. Among these is an iron apple-parer.
Many of these cheap treasures were precious keepsakes from the hearts which fondly sent them—under very unintelligible superscriptions—to sweethearts whom they never reached. Some are tokens from beyond the seas, which came from a far-off land only to find the one sought—dead or living—gone, without a clue.
During the war, tens of thousands of photographs were thus sent astray. The husband, the father, the brother, the son, under whose name they came—alas! when they reached his regiment, he was not—the heaped-up trench, the unknown grave, the unburied dead—somewhere amid them all—he slept, and the memento of the love that lived for him, came back to this receptacle of the nation, and here it is! On a stand near the window, is an immense open book lined with photographs, all the photographs of soldiers. With a tender hand, the Government gathered these pictures of its lost and unknown sons and garnered them here, for the sake of the living, who might seek their lost. Turning over the pages, we see many empty spaces, and find that friends coming here and turning over the pages of this book have identified the faces of loved ones who perished in the war. Many of these are photographs of a poor character, (whose transient chemicals are already fading out,) which were taken on the field, and sent, by soldiers, home to mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts. The chances of war are sufficient to account for their going astray of their objects and for their return here—where more than one tear-blinded woman has sought and found them, at last.
To return to the dryer details of the Dead-Letter Office, we find that all letters held for postage, all blank, unmailable, and hotel letters pass through a like process with the dead-letter, with the exception of the unmailable letters, which come directly from the office with written lists, which are checked to see if the letters are all with the lists. These the opener counter-checks, marking the contents both on letter and list, to show that it was received and doubly opened. These lists, with their letters, are sent to the Return Branch. Here they are returned to their writers, and their lists are made to show the disposition of every letter. These lists are carefully filed and subject to re-perusal. The Return Branch, which is composed entirely of ladies, sends average dead-letters back to their writers at the rate of seven thousand a day. In this branch we find the application-clerk whose duty it is to trace letters, and to send such information to persons applying for letters as the records may show. In case of the loss of a valuable letter, the Department spares no pains in its efforts to trace and find it.