NO one denies that the postal card is a great thing, and yet it makes most people mad to get one This is because we naturally feel sensitive about having our correspondence open to the eye of the postmaster and postal clerk. Yet they do not read them. Postal employés hate a postal card as cordially as anyone else. If they were banished and had nothing to read but a package of postal cards, or a foreign book of statistics, they would read the statistics. This wild hunger for postal cards on the part of postmasters is all a myth. When the writer don't care who sees his message, that knocks the curiosity out of those who handle those messages. A man who would read a postal card without being compelled to by some stringent statute, must be a little deranged. When you receive one, you say, "Here's a message of so little importance that the writer didn't care who saw it. I don't care much for it, myself." Then you look it over and lay it away and forget it. Do you think that the postmaster is going to wear out his young life in devouring literature that the sendee don't feel proud of when he receives it? Hay, nay.
During our official experience we have been placed where we could have read postal cards time and again, and no one but the All-seeing Eye would have detected it; but we have controlled ourself and closed our eyes to the written message, refusing to take advantage of the confidence reposed in us by our government, and those who thus trusted us with their secrets. All over our great land every moment of the day or night these little cards are being silently scattered, breathing loving words inscribed with a hard lead pencil, and shedding information upon sundered hearts, and they are as safe as though they had never been breathed.
They are safer, in most instances, because they cannot be read by anybody in the whole world.
That is why it irritates us to have some one open up a conversation by saying, "You remember what that fellow wrote me from Cheyenne on that postal card of the 25th, and how he rounded me up for not sending him those goods?" Now we can't keep all those things in our head. It requires too much of a strain to do it on the salary we receive. A man with a very large salary and a tenacious memory might keep run of the postal correspondence in a small office, but we cannot do it. We are not accustomed to it, and it rattles and excites us.
A CARD.
I HAVE just received a letter from my friend, Bill Nye, of The Laramie City Boomerang, wherein he informs me that he is engaged to the beautiful and accomplished Lydia E. Pinkham, of "Vegetable Compounds" fame, and that the wedding will take place on next Christmas. To be sure, I am expected at the wedding, and I'll be on hand, if I can secure a clean shirt by that time, and the roads ain't too bad. But I'm somewhat at a loss what to get as a suitable present, as Bill informs me in a postscript to his letter, that gifts of bibles, albums, nickel-plated pickle dishes, chromos with frames, and the like, will not be in order, as it is utterly impossible to pawn articles of this kind in Laramie City.—The Bohemian.
We are sorry that the above letter, which we dashed off in a careless moment, has been placed before the public, as later developments have entirely changed the aspect of the matter; the engagement between ourself and Lydia having been rudely broken by the young lady herself. She has returned the solitaire filled ring, and henceforth we can be nothing more to each other than friends. The promise which bade fair to yield so much joy in the future has been ruthlessly yanked asunder, and two young hearts must bleed through the coming years. Far be it from us to say aught that would reflect upon the record of Miss Pinkham.
It would only imperil her chances in the future, and deny her the sweet satisfaction of gathering in another guileless sucker like us. The truth, however, cannot be evaded, that Lydia is no longer young. She is now in the sere and yellow leaf. The gurgle of girlhood, and the romping careless grace of her childhood, are matters of ancient history alone.
We might go on and tell how one thing brought on another, till the quarrel occurred, and hot words and an assault and battery led to this estrangement, but we will not do it. It would be wrong for a great, strong man to take advantage of his strength and the public press, to speak disparagingly of a young thing like Lyd. No matter how unreasonably she may have treated us, we are dumb and silent on this point. Journalists who have been invited, and have purchased costly wedding presents, may ship the presents by express, prepaid, and we will accept them, and struggle along with our first great heart trouble, while Lydia goes on in her mad career.