The following instance will illustrate this. Before the passage of the late Postal Treaty with Great Britain, a clerk in one of our large cities was sent to the post-office to mail a letter, containing an order for goods on an English house. The clerk pocketed the twenty-four cents which he had been intrusted with for the purpose of pre-paying the letter; therefore agreeably to the postal arrangements then existing, it could not go by steamer, but was sent by a sailing vessel. Consequently the order was delayed, and therefore was not executed as promptly as the firm sending it had expected; and when the goods arrived they had fallen in value to such an extent, that the firm in question incurred by the operation a loss estimated at at least ten thousand dollars. CHAPTER XXVI. Post Masters as Directories--Novel Applications--The Butter Business. A Thievish Family--"Clarinda" in a City--Decoying with Cheese--Post Master's Response. A Truant Husband--Woman's Instinct. Editors are supposed by many to be walking encyclopedias, with the record of the entire range of human knowledge inscribed on the tablets of their brains; and there are those who in like manner seem to consider post masters as living Directories, able at short notice to inform any one who chooses to ask, where Smith lives, and what business Jones is in, or what is the price of guano, (an inquiry actually made by letter, of a New York post master.) In short, these Government officers are often called upon to serve the public in a sphere which Congress never contemplated in the various enactments it has passed respecting the duties of post masters, and the details of the postal system. A few specimens of letters received by different post masters, may not be uninteresting, as illustrating this phase of post-office life. Here is one from an individual desirous of entering into a mercantile transaction in the "botter" line, and receiving the post master's endorsement of some good "commish marchan" who could be interested in the business. G---- ----, Pennsylvania, January 29, 1855. Postmaster will pleze to give this letter to a good Commish Marchan what he could pay for fresh botter everry weak if a man would cent a hundred up to 3 hundred paunts my intension is to go in sutch bisnis You will plese rite me back to this present time. Yours Respectful J. S. If the "fresh botter" was "cent everry _weak_," as was proposed, it must undoubtedly have been very much sought after, as possessing the negative, but important merit of not being _strong_. Our next specimen was received by the post master of one of the cities in Western New York, and is unique both as regards its object, and its orthography, or rather cacography, which appears like "fonotipy" run mad.