There were two mail deliveries in St. Charles Street every day, one at nine o’clock in the morning and the other at noon. The postman made his nine o’clock visit, but there was no letter for Richard Sumner, Esquire. He began to feel that he really had cause for anxiety; no check, hardly any money, and his steamer to sail early the next morning. When the time for the noon delivery came, Dick was sitting on a sunny bench in Lafayette Square, directly opposite his house, where he could watch the door, waiting impatiently for the arrival of the very last mail that could bring him a check in time for the next day’s steamer. He saw the postman walking rapidly up the street, ringing doorbells and handing in letters. He saw him stop at the house next door to his and hand in a letter there. He saw him go on a few steps and pause a moment, then go on again, on past his house without ringing the bell! Dick could hardly believe his eyes; hardly realize that there was no possible chance of getting his check in time. “Well,” he said to himself, “I’ve done my best to get money by mail, and I’ve failed. Now we’ll see what the telegraph will do. I don’t intend to lose that boat.” As he got up from the bench to go to the telegraph office a hundred factory bells and whistles were sounding for noon. He walked down St. Charles Street to the main telegraph office, under the St. Charles Hotel, and wrote his dispatch:-- Daily Transport, New York:-- No check received. Please telegraph me three hundred dollars immediately. SUMNER. He actually grudged the fifty cents for sending the dispatch, his money was so low. But after sending it he walked back to his old seat in the square. With all his tribulation he was thinking out the next article he was to write; and he thought and thought, sometimes about the money and sometimes about the article, till suddenly he clapped his hand down upon his knee. “There’s another complication!” he exclaimed. “They won’t pay a telegraphic money order before nine in the morning, nor after five in the afternoon. It’s almost certain that my money won’t get here before five o’clock, and I’ll not be able to get it to-night. By the time that I can get it in the morning my steamer will be gone! “Now there’s a way out of every difficulty,” he continued, “and there’s a way out of this. What I must do is go back to the telegraph office, introduce myself to the manager, explain the case to him, and arrange to get the money this evening whenever it arrives. I think that will do it.” For this purpose he walked back to the telegraph office and sent in his card to the manager. He was shown into a handsome private office, where he soon made known what he wanted. “I suppose you have some papers that will identify you, Mr. Sumner,” the manager said when Dick concluded; “letters in your pocket or something of that sort?”