To Henniker-Heaton, in London: STORMFIELD, REDDING, CONNECTICUT, Jan. 18, 1909. DEAR HENNIKER-HEATON,--I do hope you will succeed to your heart's desire in your cheap-cablegram campaign, and I feel sure you will. Indeed your cheap-postage victory, achieved in spite of a quarter-century of determined opposition, is good and rational prophecy that you will. Wireless, not being as yet imprisoned in a Chinese wall of private cash and high-placed and formidable influence, will come to your aid and make your new campaign briefer and easier than the other one was. Now then, after uttering my serious word, am I privileged to be frivolous for a moment? When you shall have achieved cheap telegraphy, are you going to employ it for just your own selfish profit and other people's pecuniary damage, the way you are doing with your cheap postage? You get letter-postage reduced to 2 cents an ounce, then you mail me a 4-ounce letter with a 2-cent stamp on it, and I have to pay the extra freight at this end of the line. I return your envelope for inspection. Look at it. Stamped in one place is a vast “T,” and under it the figures “40,” and under those figures appears an “L,” a sinister and suspicious and mysterious L. In another place, stamped within a circle, in offensively large capitals, you find the words “DUE 8 CENTS.” Finally, in the midst of a desert space up nor-noreastard from that circle you find a figure “3” of quite unnecessarily aggressive and insolent magnitude--and done with a blue pencil, so as to be as conspicuous as possible. I inquired about these strange signs and symbols of the postman. He said they were P. O. Department signals for his instruction. “Instruction for what?” “To get extra postage.” “Is it so? Explain. Tell me about the large T and the 40. “It's short for Take 40--or as we postmen say, grab 40” “Go on, please, while I think up some words to swear with.” “Due 8 means, grab 8 more.” “Continue.” “The blue-pencil 3 was an afterthought. There aren't any stamps for afterthoughts; the sums vary, according to inspiration, and they whirl in the one that suggests itself at the last moment. Sometimes they go several times higher than this one. This one only means hog 3 cents more. And so if you've got 51 cents about you, or can borrow it--” “Tell me: who gets this corruption?” “Half of it goes to the man in England who ships the letter on short postage, and the other half goes to the P.O.D. to protect cheap postage from inaugurating a deficit.” “-------------------” “I can't blame you; I would say it myself in your place, if these ladies were not present. But you see I'm only obeying orders, I can't help myself.” “Oh, I know it; I'm not blaming you. Finally, what does that L stand for?” “Get the money, or give him L. It's English, you know.” “Take it and go. It's the last cent I've got in the world--.”