CHAPTER IX
ADVICE ON LETTER-POSTING
1. When you go out with the intention of posting a letter, be sure you do not put it in your pocket, or the odds are ten to one that you will return home with it.
2. Always address the envelope before you write a letter.
3. If you write love-letters to two different women, be careful to enclose the first one in its properly addressed envelope before you begin writing the second one, or Maria may receive the letter intended for Eliza, and vice versâ.
4. Do not apologize in your postscript for having forgotten to stamp your letter. It might get you found out.
5. If you have written an important letter, or one containing money, put it in the letter-box yourself. If anything wrong happens to it, you will have no one to accuse or suspect.
6. When you send currency by post, do not let anyone know it by having the letter registered. Money stolen through the post has always been abstracted from registered letters. I have never heard of one letter of mine not being delivered in Europe and in America. People never take their chance. They never open a letter unless they know there is money in it. How can they know if you are careful in concealing paper money under cover? Never label your letters, 'There is money in it.'
7. If you post a letter, which you do not want anybody to read except the person to whom it is addressed, do not forget to write your name and address on the back of the envelope, so that, if not delivered, or mislaid, it may be returned to you unopened.
8. If you want an important letter to be delivered in New York at a determined time, take my advice: Post that letter, in the city, twenty-four hours before the said determined time.