delivered by the postman. With what wonder the chubby fingers
broke the seal! It did not matter that there was an inclosure to one's
mother, and that the thing itself was written by an adoring relative;
it was a personal letter, of private and particular importance, and
that day the postman assumed his rightful place in one's affairs.

In the treasure box of many a grandmother is hidden a pathetic scrawl
that the baby made for her and called "a letter." To the alien eye,
it is a mere tangle of pencil marks, and the baby himself, grown
to manhood, with children of his own, would laugh at the yellowed
message, which is put away with his christening robe and his first
shoes, but to one, at least, it speaks with a deathless voice.

It is written in books and papers that some unhappy mortals are
swamped with mail. As a lady recently wrote to the President of the
United States: "I suppose you get so many letters that when you see
the postman coming down the street, you don't care whether he has
anything for you or not."

Indeed, the President might well think the universe had gone suddenly
wrong if the postman passed him by, but there are compensations in
everything. The First Gentleman of the Republic must inevitably miss
the pleasant emotions which letters bring to the most of us.

The clerks and carriers in the business centres may be pardoned if
they lose sight of the potentialities of the letters that pass
through their hands. When a skyscraper is a postal district in
itself, there is no time for the man in grey to think of the burden he
carries, save as so many pounds of dead weight, becoming appreciably
lighter at each stop. But outside the hum and bustle, on quiet streets
and secluded by-ways, there are faces at the windows, watching eagerly
for the mail.

The progress of the postman is akin to a Roman triumph, for in his
leathern pack lies Fate. Long experience has given him a sixth sense,
as if the letters breathed a hint of their contents through their
superscriptions.

The business letter, crisp and to the point, has an atmosphere of its
own, even where cross lines of typewriting do not show through the
envelope.

The long, rambling, friendly hand is distinctive, and if it has been
carried in the pocket a long time before mailing, the postman knows
that the writer is a married woman with a foolish trust in her
husband.

Circulars addressed mechanically, at so much a thousand, never
deceive the postman,