Ten Years Among the Mail Bags: Or, Notes from the Diary of a Special Agent of the Post-Office DepartmentHolbrook, James
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Ten Years Among the Mail Bags: Or, Notes from the Diary of a Special Agent of the Post-Office Department
Holbrook, James
Postal service -- United States
It would undoubtedly be a safer way of doing business, to insist upon
an order in every case where a letter is delivered to any other person
than the one to whom it is addressed, or some one usually employed by
him for this purpose. But the country post master who should rigidly
insist upon this rule, would receive "more kicks than coppers" for
his good intentions; and indeed, cases like the one supposed are few
and far between.
In cities, also, something like the following might and does
frequently happen. A person known to be in the employ of another,
comes to the post-office, and says he is sent by his employer for his
letters, and the clerk in attendance, believing his statement, gives
them to him. He robs the letters and disappears. In this case, it
hardly seems that the clerk was guilty of a culpable degree of
negligence.
Here is another instance of the manner in which a letter may go to the
wrong person, where the fault is not chargeable to post-office
employés. In the list of advertised letters, one is found for John
Smith. An individual calls for the letter, claiming to be the
identical John, and receives it; but a day or two after the "Simon
Pure" appears, and is indignant at learning that his letter has
already been appropriated, or that the clerk knows nothing about it,
having forgotten the circumstance. Of course the clerk, in such a
case, might require the supposed John Smith to identify the letter as
far as was possible, by mentioning the place from which he expected
it; but many supposable circumstances might destroy the conclusiveness
of this evidence of identity, such as the acquaintance of the false
John with the real one, and his knowledge of the place whence he
received most of his correspondence. Besides, the real claimant might
not be able to tell where the letter was mailed, for his correspondent
might have written from some other place than the one where he usually
lived.
But it is needless to multiply instances. Those that we have
mentioned, and many others which will readily occur to the reader,
will suffice to show that the number of cases in which a post master
can justifiably be prosecuted, is very limited by the nature of the
circumstances.
On the other hand, a proper diligence requires of the post master not
only the obvious precaution of securing reliable assistants, but a
care in relation to the minutiæ of his office which shall prevent the
mislaying of letters, by carelessness _within_, or their abstraction
by theft from _without_. The boxes and delivery window should be so
arranged as to render the interior of the boxes inaccessible to
outsiders, and of course no one should be admitted within the
enclosure, under any ordinary circumstances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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