Ten Years Among the Mail Bags. James Holbrook
and became purse-proud on the strength of that magnificent coin. Happy was he who had unlimited "tick;" to whose call livery-stable keepers were obsequious, and with whom tailors were ready to invest, having faith to believe that the present dry aspect of the financial sky would be succeeded by refreshing showers of "mint-drops" from the paternal pockets. Some of the young ladies who had invoked the milliner's assistance in defiance of the poet's line—"Beauty unadorned, &c.," occasionally received hints respecting the settlement of their trifling accounts, which materially diminished the pleasure that they would otherwise have felt in the contemplation of their outer adornments. Bonnets reminded them of bills, and dresses of duns.
The more juvenile portion of our scholastic community, too, felt the pressure of the "hard times" which some invisible hand had brought upon them. In early life, the saccharine bump is largely developed, but unlike other organs described by phrenologists, this is within the mouth, and is commonly called the "sweet tooth." Those luxurious youth who had hitherto indulged the cravings of this organ ad libitum, or as far as they could do so without the knowledge of their teachers, found the wary confectioners unwilling longer to satisfy their unsophisticated appetites, without more "indemnity for the past" if not "security for the future," than they had yet furnished.
So these victims of raging desire were compelled to retire hungry from untasted luxuries, not without sundry candid expressions of their feelings toward the obdurate retailers of sweets, and tart replies from those individuals. Their only consolation was to revel in dreams in which the temple of Fame was supported by pillars of candy, with a protuberant pie for a dome; while her trumpet was converted into a cornucopia from which unfailing streams of sugar-plums were issuing.
But such annoyances and inconveniences as have been enumerated were trifling, compared with other consequences which resulted from this prolonged and systematic robbery of the mails. It is hard for one who never had his word doubted, to learn by unmistakeable indications that his story of money expected and not received, is disbelieved by an impatient creditor, who perhaps hints that the money has come and gone in some other direction than that which it should have taken. The honorable pride of some was wounded in this manner, and much ill-feeling arose between those who had hitherto regarded each other with mutual respect.
The term of the school was just closing, and worthy Mrs. K., who had several of the pupils as boarders in her family, being blessed with a rather large organ of caution, refused to allow one or two to leave (who did not expect to return the next term,) without depositing some collateral security for the payment of their board-bills. Those luckless youth had written again and again for the money necessary to settle their accounts in the place; but their entreaties were apparently unnoticed and unanswered. They were in the condition of Mr. Pecksniff's pupils, who were requested by their preceptor to ring the bell which was in their room, if they wanted anything. They often did so, but nobody ever answered it. It very naturally seemed almost incredible to Mrs. K. that the parents of her boarders should neglect to provide for the various expenses which arise at the close of a school term, especially as these pupils were not to return. So the good lady felt bound by her duty to herself to lay an embargo upon their trunks, and she further took occasion to observe that if there hadn't been so much horseback riding, &c., during the summer, her bill could have been settled. This of course provoked an angry retort, and suspicion smouldered on one side, and resentment flamed out on the other, until the whole mystery was unravelled.
In another boarding-house, inhabited by pupils of both sexes, it had been customary for some of their number to get from the post-office the letters and papers sent to them, and this duty had lately devolved, for the most part, on one person. Henry S., who was a relation of the post master, and, from other circumstances, had frequent occasion to visit the office. As he returned almost empty-handed of letters from day to day, his disappointed fellow-boarders at first wondered at the silence of their friends, then suspicion began to work in their minds; and since the post master was a man of unsullied honor, and entirely reliable for honesty, they at length reluctantly admitted the supposition that Henry S. must be the delinquent.
Acting on the ground that S. was the guilty one, his fellow-boarders gave orders to the post master, forbidding the delivery of their letters to him. So the next day, when he presented himself at the office, he was thunderstruck by the information that he had lost the confidence of his fellow-pupils, and that they would no longer trust their letters in his hands.
"It can't be," exclaimed he, "that they suppose I took their letters."
"I guess they do," said the old post master; "but I think they had better be sure that there were letters coming to them, before they suspect you."
"Oh, now I see why they have acted so strangely, lately, just as if they didn't want me around. I never once thought that this was the reason of it."
From that time, he withdrew himself as much as possible from the society of his fellow-pupils, stung by a sense of their injustice, and cherishing anything but amiable feelings towards them; yet he did not escape sundry taunts and flings at his character for honesty, from the maliciously disposed. And although those who had regarded him with suspicion, frankly acknowledged their error when the true culprit eame to light, yet it was long before he could entirely forgive them the deep mortification they had caused him.
Nor were such cases as this the worst that occurred.
There was a boy in the school, "the only child of his mother, and she was a widow." The lad was quick in intellect, amiable in disposition, and a general favorite throughout the institution. He loved his mother with a strength of affection not often surpassed, and it was fully responded to, by his tender parent. The frequent visits which she made him during his residence at the school had given her opportunities to become acquainted with many of her son's young companions, as well as with his teachers, so that she was quite well known in the little community.
Let us place ourselves at the residence of Mrs. E. (the lady in question,) some hundred miles away. She is lying upon a sick-bed, from which she will never arise. Let us listen to the conversation between her and her attendant.
"Has the train come up yet, Mary?"
"Yes, ma'am, it passed a few minutes ago, but Charley hasn't come."
"Of course he hasn't, he would have been in my arms before this, if he had."
"Perhaps," suggests Mary, "he will be here by the next train."
"God grant he may," groans the dying mother. "It is now more than a week since they first wrote to him, telling him that I was very sick, and requesting him to come immediately. Oh, what can keep him away so long? I fear he is sick himself. Some one must go to-morrow, and find out what it is that keeps him from me. I cannot die without seeing him once more."
While this mother was struggling with disease, and with that "hope deferred" that "maketh the heart sick," her son was pursuing his daily round of studies and amusements, anticipating with delight his return home at the close of the term. We may imagine the grief and distress of the poor boy when his uncle, who came for him, told him how the friends at home had written to him twice, each time enclosing him the requisite funds to bear his expenses home, that there might be no delay from that cause. And how his mother's only wish, as she now lay rapidly sinking, was to see once more her beloved Charley.
Off they went, the boy and his uncle, on iron wings—but the wing of the Death-Angel was swifter, and before they arrived at the place of their destination, had cast its awful shadow over the mother's brow.
It will easily be believed that the failure of so many letters to reach those for whom they were intended, excited no small degree of uneasiness in the minds of the parents and friends of the pupils; and in some instances, such was their alarm and anxiety, that journeys of hundreds of miles were undertaken in order to learn why their letters were not received, and why they heard nothing from those to whom they wrote; for the unknown author of all this trouble and confusion, in order to prevent discovery, often destroyed the letters passing both ways.
I cannot here refrain from saying a few words respecting the heinousness of such villanous conduct on the part of post masters or their employés. Leaving out of sight