question; but whether Congress has the right to declare the streets of a city post-roads for any purpose is questionable. When Blood’s Express was first established, its main object was to accommodate merchants, mechanics, and professional men generally, by furnishing a medium of communication with their customers, clients, &c., which would anticipate the slow movements of the old postal mode of delivery. If this continued to be its legitimate object, it is very probable the commercial community would have taken a much greater interest in it than they did; but, unfortunately for this new postal system, it assumed the character of a “Parisian Bureau,” for the reception and delivery of small documents, wherein “love, courtship, and marriage” were all treated with an eye to _excitement_ rather than as a virtuous incentive to their study and moral consequences. Young and inexperienced girls were gradually led into (initial) correspondence with “fast young men;” foolish widows and old maids to advertise for husbands, and equally silly, weak-minded elderly gentlemen to imitate their example. Added to this, many made this penny system the medium to originate practical jokes, and thus the “express” became a sort of Pandora’s (_postal_) box for “all sorts of people” to try experiments with fickle fortune, either by marriage or swindling. Both in some instances succeeded. The same was attempted when the government took charge of the “express;” but the department soon put a stop to this nonsensical practice by ignoring as legitimate matter every thing of an _initial_ character. Young girls, foolish widows, old maids, and weak-minded men, who could without much publicity send and receive communications through “Blood’s Express,” found a post-office somewhat too dignified an institution for their _childish_ intellects. Still, this class of people,—and it takes all kinds to make up a world,—added to another class who make of crime a pastime and licentiousness a pleasure, adopted other modes of carrying on their “vocation,” which we here allude to under the head of “Indecent postal matter.” XV. Tales of the Post-Office. _THE VICTIM OF LOVE._ “Oh, grief beyond all other griefs, when fate First leaves the young heart lone and desolate In the wide world, without that only tie For which it loved to live or feared to die!” I was seated at my desk; the index-box was filled with letters,—the great Southern mail having just arrived. “Are there any letters for me, sir,—Henry Middleton?”