“CETRARO. Per le continuate premure ed insistenze di questo egregio uffiziale postale Signor Rocca Francesco—che nulla lascia pel bene avviamento del nostro uffizio—presso l’ on. Direzione delle poste di Cosenza, si è ottenuta una cassetta postale, che affissa lungo il Corso Carlo Pancaso, ci dà la bella commodità di imbucare le nostre corrispondenze per essere rilevate tre volte al giorno non solo, quanto ci evita persino la dolorosa e lunga via crucis che dovevamo percorrere qualvolta si era costretti d’ imbuccare una lettera, essendo il nostro uffizio situato all’ estremità del paese.
“Tributiamo perciò sincera lode al nostro caro uffiziale postale Sig. Rocca, e ci auguriamo che egli continui ancora al miglioramento dell’ uffizio istesso, e mercè l’ opera sua costante ed indefessa siamo sicuri che l’ uffizio postale di Cetraro assurgerà fra non molto ad un’ importanza maggiore di quella che attualmente.”
The erection of a letter-box in the street of a small place of which 80 per cent of the readers have never so much as heard. ... I begin to understand why the cultured Tarentines do not read these journals.
By far the best part of all such papers is the richly-tinted personal column, wherein lovers communicate with each other, or endeavour to do so. I read it conscientiously from beginning to end, admiring, in my physical capacity, the throbbing passion that prompts such public outbursts of confidence and, from a literary point of view, their lapidary style, model of condensation, impossible to render in English and conditioned by the hard fact that every word costs two sous. Under this painful material stress, indeed, the messages are sometimes crushed into a conciseness which the females concerned must have some difficulty in unperplexing: what on earth does the parsimonious Flower mean by his Delphic fourpenny worth, thus punctuated—
“(You have) not received. How. Safety.”
One cannot help smiling at this circuitous and unromantic method of touching the hearts of ladies who take one’s fancy; at the same time, it testifies to a resourceful vitality, striving to break through the barriers of Hispano-Arabic convention which surround the fair sex in this country. They are nothing if not poetic, these love-sick swains. Arrow murmurs: “My soul lies on your pillow, caressing you softly”; Strawberry laments that “as bird outside nest, I am alone and lost. What sadness,” and Star finds the “Days eternal, till Thursday.” And yet they often choose rather prosaic pseudonyms. Here is Sahara who “suffers from your silence,” while Asthma is “anticipating one endless kiss,” and Old England observing, more ir sorrow than in anger, that he “waited vainly one whole hour.”
But the sagacious Cooked Lobster desires, before commiting himself further, “a personal interview.” He has perhaps been cooked once before.
Letters and numbers are best, after all. So thinks F. N. 13, who is utterly disgusted with his flame—
“Your silence speaks. Useless saying anything. Ça ira.” And likewise 7776—B, a designing rogue and plainly a spendthrift, who wastes ninepence in making it clear that he “wishes to marry rich young lady, forgiving youthful errors.” If I were the girl, I would prefer to take my chances with “Cooked Lobster.”
“Will much-admired young-lady cherries-in-black-hat indicate method possible correspondence 10211, Post-Office?”