The post-office clerks got through their work briskly enough when once they commenced the delivery, the alphabetical system of arrangement enabling them to produce the letters immediately on the name being given. One was not kept long in suspense, and many a poor fellow’s face lengthened out into a doleful expression of disbelief and disappointment, as, scarcely had he uttered his name, when he was promptly told there was nothing for him. This was a sentence from which there was no appeal, however incredulous one might be; and every man was incredulous; for during the hour or two he had been waiting, he had become firmly convinced in his own mind that there must be a letter for him; and it was no satisfaction at all to see the clerk, surrounded as he was by thousands of letters, take only a packet of a dozen or so in which to look for it: one would like to have had the post-office searched all over, and if without success, would still have thought there was something wrong. I was myself upon one occasion deeply impressed with this spirit of unbelief in the infallibility of the post-office oracle, and tried the effect of another application the next day, when my perseverance was crowned with success. There was one window devoted exclusively to the use of foreigners, among whom English were not included; and here a polyglot individual, who would have been a useful member of society of the Tower of Babel, answered the demands of all European nations, and held communication with Chinamen, Sandwich Islanders, and all the stray specimens of humanity from unknown parts of the earth. One reason why men went to little trouble or expense in making themselves comfortable in their homes, if homes they could be called, was the constant danger of fire. The city was a mass of wooden and canvas buildings, the very look of which suggested the idea of a conflagration. A room was a mere partitioned-off place, the walls of which were sometimes only of canvas, though generally of boards, loosely put together, and covered with any sort of material which happened to be most convenient--cotton cloth, printed calico, or drugget, frequently papered, as if to render it more inflammable. Floors and walls were by no means so exclusive as one is accustomed to think them; they were not transparent certainly, but otherwise they insured little privacy: a general conversation could be very easily carried on by all the dwellers in a house, while, at the same time, each of them was enjoying the seclusion, such as it was, of his own apartment. A young lady, who was boarding at one of the hotels, very feelingly remarked that it was a most disagreeable place to live in, because, if any gentleman was to pop the question to her, the report would be audible in every part of the house, and all the other inmates would be waiting to hear the answer she might give.