Not these letters alone were sad; for sometimes a whole drama could be read from one or two short letters. One day we found among the dead letters a note written in a feeble, scrawling hand. It was by a boy, a prisoner and sick, in one of the penal institutions of New York--sick, poor fellow! and imploring his mother--oh, so piteously!--to come and see him. He was in the sick ward, he said, and if he _had_ been wicked, and had struck at his step-father when he saw him abuse his mother, would she not come to see him, only once, for all that? She must not let his step-father prevent her from coming; he was dreaming of his mother and sister every night, and he knew his mother would come to him; but she must come soon, for the doctor had said so. Perhaps the letter had not reached the mother because the step-father had taken her out of the son's reach; for, in the course of a day or two, we found another letter addressed to the same woman, by one of the prison officials: the boy, Charley, had died on such a date--about a week after his letter had been written--and he had looked and asked for his mother to the last. About letters written by German people I have noticed one peculiarity: they never omit to write the number of the year in some part of the letter, or on the envelope, outside. Sometimes it is written where the name of the country or the State should be found on the envelope, so that the direction would read, "Jacob Schmied, St. Louis, 1865;" or they write it at the bottom of the letter, instead of signing their name, and then write their name at the beginning of the letter, as though they were writing the letter to themselves. Everything is heavy and clumsy about their letters; they never indulge in joke or sentiment; and through the negligence of one of the German clerks, the most serious trouble had almost been brewed in a German brewer's family, at one time. It happened in this way: A substantial German brewer had written to Hans Biersöffel, dunning him for money, owing on several barrels of _lager_. Hans must have left the city--at any rate, the letter came to our office, and was returned to the brewer; but, unfortunately, a very sentimental letter, containing a copy of some love-sick verses, written by a German lady, and held in the office as a curiosity for a little while, had (by mistake, of course) found its way into this letter. The honest Dutchman had meant to return this piece of property to our office at the first opportunity, and therefore carried it in his pocket-book, where his wife discovered it, seized it, and held it over his head, as the sword of Damocles, forever after--as he could not prove to her satisfaction that the letter and verses had _not_ been sent to _him_ by the writer.