And such spelling! Would you ever imagine that Galveston could be tortured into "Calresdon," Connecticut into "Kanedikait," and Territory into "Teartoir"?
Recently the Postmaster-General has found it necessary to issue very strict orders about plain addresses, and a great many people have tried to be witty at his expense. I copied this address from a postal card:
Alden Simmons,
Savannah Township,
Ashland County, State of Ohio;
Age 29; Occupation, Lawyer;
Politics, Republican;
Longitude West from Troy 2°;
Street Main
No. 249;
Box 1008.
Color, White;
Sex, Male;
Ancestry, Domestic.
For President 1880, U. S. Grant!
About once in two years there is a sale of the packages which are detained in the office for the same reason that letters are. All the small articles are placed in envelopes, on which are written brief descriptions of their contents. Any one is allowed the privilege of examining them before purchasing. There are thousands of these packages, containing almost everything you can think of. I glanced over an old catalogue, and selected at random half a dozen things that will give you an idea of the endless variety: Florida beans, surgical instruments, cat-skin, boy's jacket, map of the Holy Land, two packages of corn starch, and a diamond ring—in truth, as the chief of the D. L. O. says in his report, "everything from a small bottle of choice perfumery to a large box of Limburger cheese."
But there were two things that nobody would ever buy, so this great institution was obliged to keep them. One was a horrid, grinning, skeleton head, that had been sent to Dr. Gross, the eminent Philadelphia surgeon; but the box being nailed so that the postmaster could not examine its contents without breaking it, he was obliged to charge letter rates of postage, which the doctor refused to pay; consequently it found a proper resting-place in the house appropriated specially to dead things.
Occupying the same shelf are several glass jars containing serpents of various sizes preserved in alcohol. These snakes were received at the D. L. O. in two large tin cans, the ends of which were perforated to admit air. They were addressed to a professor in Germany. It could not be ascertained at what office they had been mailed. There were seventeen in all, but some of the smaller ones were dead.
System, punctuality, industry, belong to the Dead-letter Office. It seems to embrace every other branch of business, and, as I have shown you, even to know how to treat such unwelcome guests as a nest of live serpents.