Having received a commission from the Post Master General as before stated, with orders to investigate this case, I proceeded at once to the place in question, having first been assured of the entire reliability of the post master in charge there; and if looks could ever be taken as the index of the man, I needed no other assurance of his honesty. I found an old gentleman who had numbered his three-score years and ten, a veteran in the service, having held the post which he then filled, "from time immemorial." He looked the worthy representative of that class of men, whose moral principles are applied to the discharge of public duties, as strictly as to those of a private character,--men like that high-minded worthy, who, when his son attempted to help himself to a sheet of paper from a desk containing public property, rebuked him thus: "Take some paper from _my_ desk, if you want it. _That_ paper belongs to the United States." It is generally necessary in investigating cases of depredations, to inquire into the honesty of the clerks in the offices to which we direct our attention; but in the present instance, such a precaution was uncalled for, since the only assistant of the old post master was his wife, a venerable, motherly matron, of about his age, who had aided him in his official duties, and had been his help-meet in the household for many, many years. The correspondence of a generation had passed through their hands, and they were enabled to note the changes in the number and appearance of the letters which were placed in their charge during the long period of their incumbency,--changes produced by the increase of population, the freer intercourse between distant places, and the facilities for epistolary communication, which had been progressing ever since they had assumed the responsibilities of their office. At first few letters were transmitted but those of a sturdy, business-like appearance, written on coarse paper, and sealed with wafers of about the dimensions of a modern lady's watch,--wafers that evidently had in charge matter of weighty import, and were mighty embodiments of the adhesive principle. Then, as Time and Improvement advanced, and the _cacoëthes scribendi_ became more generally developed, documents appeared of a milder grade, and of a more imaginative aspect, not only representing the cares of business life, but indicating, by the fineness of their texture, the laboriously neat and often feminine character of their superscriptions, and the delicacy of their expressive waxen seals, that Love and Friendship, and the interests of domestic circles, were also beginning thus to find utterance.