The letters stolen were principally addressed to the members of a large and flourishing literary institution, situated in the town already mentioned, and embracing in its catalogue pupils of both sexes from almost every section of the Union. So keen was the scent of the robber, that, like an animated "divining rod," he could indicate unerringly the existence of gold, or its equivalent beneath the paper surface soil, and he "prospected" with more certainty, though less honesty, than a California miner. From all the mail-matter passing through his office, he would invariably select the valuable packages, abstracting their _material_ contents, and, as it afterwards appeared, committing the letters to the flames. "Dead men tell no tales." Neither do burnt letters. The results of this system of robbery, as regarded those who suffered by it, were somewhat peculiar. The abstraction of an equal amount from the members of a business community, might have inconvenienced some, but would have made little perceptible difference in the course of business. The temporary deficiency would have been as little felt, on the whole, as the withdrawing of a pail-full of water from a running stream. The level is quickly restored, as supplies flow in. But when the victims of dishonesty are youth pursuing their studies at a distance from home, and depending on remittances from their parents and friends for the means of discharging the debts which they may incur, the case is widely different. Here the stream is dammed up somewhere between its source and the place where the waters ought to be flowing, and the worst description of drought--a drought of money--ensues. All sorts of consequences, in the present instance, followed this state of things. The school became, in this particular, like a besieged city, cut off from supplies from without, while its inhabitants lived on under an ever increasing pressure of difficulties, which made premature Micawbers of the unfortunate aspirants to that temple which is so artistically represented in the frontispiece to Webster's spelling book, as surmounting the hill of Science, and animated by the figure of Fame on the roof, proclaiming through her trumpet a perpetual invitation to enter the majestic portals beneath.