Overland Tales Part 30

"Phil," said I, interrupting him, "you told me the mules would not get a drop of water to-day: what is that lake before us, then?"

He looked up to where I pointed.

"It is _mirage_, madame. _You_ cannot be deceived by it; I am sure you must have seen it on the plains, before this."

"Yes," I said, stoutly, "I have seen _mirage_; but this is water--not _mirage_."

"We shall see," said Phil, equally determined to hold his ground.

But I was sure it could not be _mirage_--it must be water--for did I not see each of the few scattering bushes of _verde_ and sage that grew on the border, and farther out, all through the water, reflected in the clear, slightly undulating flood? The bushes seemed larger here than any of the stinted vegetation I had yet seen on the desert, and every bush was clearly reflected in the water; but it was strange that as we approached the water receded; and if I noted any particular bunch of sage or weeds, I found that, as we neared, it grew smaller, and I could no longer see its image in the water.

Phil was right--it was the _mirage_; and this _Fata Morgana_ of the plains and deserts of our own country became a most curious and interesting study to me. I could write a volume on the "dissolving views" I have seen. Leaving camp one morning, I saw, on turning, that a narrow strip of short, coa.r.s.e gra.s.s had been suddenly transformed into a tall, magnificent hedge; and a single, meagre stem of _verde_ would as suddenly grow into a large, spreading tree. Out of the clouds, on the horizon, would sometimes loom up, majestically, a tall spire, a heavy dome, or a vessel under full sail; and changing into one fantastic shape after another, the picture would slowly fade into vapor at last. Whole cities have sprung up before my eyes: I could have pointed out which one of the different cupolas I supposed to be the City Hall, and which steeple, according to my estimation, belonged to the First Presbyterian Church; and could have shown the exact locality of the harbor, from the number of masts I saw across the roofs of the houses yonder. Even Phil was deceived one morning. I asked him why he stopped the ambulance, and allowed the mules to rest at so unusual an hour in the day? He pointed to a mountain I had not noticed before, which stood almost in front of us, and was steep and bare, of a light clay-color.

"There ain't a man driving government mules knows this road better'n I do; but I'll be derned if ever I saw that mountain before."

He asked the men if they thought it could be _mirage_, but they hooted at the idea--it was too substantial for that, altogether; it was a mountain--nothing else. But while we were, all four, so intently gazing at it, the scene was shifted; the mountain parted, leaving two steep banks--the s.p.a.ce between apparently spanned by a light bridge.

For days we continued our journey through the desert, making camp generally near one of the numerous wells indiscriminately scattered between Vallecito and Fort Yuma. There are Indian Wells, Sacket's Wells, Seven Wells, Cook's Wells, which, on close inspection, prove to belong to the dissolving views, of which Arizona possesses such a variety; an old well-curb or muddy water-hole generally const.i.tuting all the claim these places have to the distinction of being called wells. But no; at Cook's Wells, we _did_ find a good, clear well of water; nor is this the only object of interest connected in my mind with the place. The station-keeper told me that a tribe of friendly Indians, not far from here, the Deguines, were to celebrate the funeral rites of a departed warrior the following day. The spirit of the "brave" was to find its way up to the Happy Hunting Grounds from the funeral-pyre on which the body was to pa.s.s through the process of incremation--this being their mode of disposing of the remains of deceased friends. A novel spectacle it would be, no doubt; but I decided not to witness it. I could already see Castle Dome looming in the distance, and I knew that I should be able to reach Fort Yuma in the course of the following day. So we left Cook's Wells early in the morning, and reached the crossing of the Colorado some time in the forenoon.

The Colorado river was "up," Phil said; and I was prepared to agree with him when I saw an expanse of muddy water covering the flat, on the other side, to a considerable distance. The old scow, or flat-boat, manned by two dirty-looking Mexicans, had no difficulty in coming up close to us, where we were waiting on the sh.o.r.e: the difficulty lay in our getting on the crazy thing without breaking through the rotten planks. Perhaps the two Mexicans looked so dirty because all their "clean clothes" were hanging out to dry, on two lines of cowhide, stretched on either side of the flat-boat, which the wind kept blowing into the mules' faces, causing them to "back out" twice, after our _entree_ to the ferry had been almost effected. There was no railing around the boat (the four posts from which the clothes-line was stretched having evidently been erected at the four corners for that purpose), and, as it was only just large enough to afford standing room for the ambulance and the men, it was anything but soothing to a woman's nerves to see the mules rear and plunge every time the wind flapped one of the articles on the line into the animals' faces. I had remained in the ambulance, and in my usual corner, but as the sh.o.r.e receded, and an ocean seemed to stretch out on every side of me, I found it hard to stay there. I had suggested to Phil, in the first place, to cut down those miserable clothes-lines, if the Mexicans refused to gather in their week's washing, but he had quieted me by saying that our men would hold the mules. However, when the current grew swifter, and the Mexicans found some difficulty in managing their craft, the men were directed to take the long poles, of which there was an abundant supply, and help to steer clear of the logs floating down the river.

Now came the difficulty; for the refractory mules would not listen to the "Ho, there, Kate; be still--will you?" with which Phil admonished the nigh leader, but persisted in rearing every time a piece of "linen"

struck them, till the old scow shook with their furious stamping, and I grew desperate in my lone corner. "Phil," I cried at last, with the energy of despair, brandishing an enormous knife I had drawn from the mess-chest, "unless you come and quiet the mules immediately, I shall get down, cut the harness, and let them jump into the river!"

An hour's drive brought us to Fort Yuma, where we rested a day or two, before resuming our journey. The country here has been described again and again; its dry, sterile plains and black, burnt-looking hills have been sufficiently execrated--relieving me of the necessity of adding my quota. Fort Yuma--grand in its desolateness, white and parched in the midst of its two embracing rivers--needs but the Dantean inscription on its gateway to make it resemble the entrance to the regions of the eternally d.a.m.ned.

It was by no means my first glimpse of the "n.o.ble savage" that I got on the banks of the Colorado, or I might have been appalled at the sight of a dozen or two of barely-clothed, filthy-looking Indians, squatted in rows wherever the sun could burn hottest on their clay-covered heads.

The specimens here seen were different from those that had come under my observation on the Plains. That Indians can be civilized William Lloyd Garrison would not doubt, could he but see with what native grace these dusky belles wear their crinoline. Nor can they be accused of the extravagance of their white sisters in matters pertaining to toilet and dress: the crinoline (worn _over_ the short petticoat, const.i.tuting their full and entire wardrobe, aside from it) apparently being the only article of luxury they indulge in, except paint--and whiskey, when they can get it. But grandest of all were the men--the warrior-like Yumas--arrayed in the traditional strip of red flannel, an occasional cast-off military garment, and the cap of hard-baked mud above alluded to. I had never seen these before, and thought them very singular as ornaments; but Phil soon explained their utility in destroying a certain parasite by which the n.o.ble red man is afflicted. During the summer months he seeks relief in an application of wet mud to the part besieged--his head. The mud is allowed to bake hard, in the course of weeks, under the broiling sun; and when quite certain that his enemy has been slaughtered, he removes the clay until another application becomes necessary.

Following the course of the Gila river for some time, we struck the desert again, beyond Gila Bend. What struck me as very surprising was, that the desert here did not look like a desert at all: the scattering _verde_-bushes and growth of cactus hiding the sand from one's eyes, always just a little distance ahead--the cacti growing so thickly in some places that, when they are in blossom, their flowers form a mosaic of brilliant hues. Some of them are very curious--particularly the "monument cactus," a tall shaft, growing to a height of over thirty feet, sometimes with arms branching out on either side, more generally a simple obelisk, covered with thorns from three to four inches long.

We were now nearing Maricopa Wells and the Pimo villages. Phil was the pearl of all drivers; and he recounted traditions and legends belonging to the past of this country that even Prescott might have wished to hear. Phil had studied the history of the country in his own way, and had evidently not kept his eyes closed while travelling back and forth through Arizona. Halting the ambulance one day, he a.s.sisted me to alight near a pile of rocks the most wonderful it was ever my fortune to behold. He called them Painted Rocks, or Sounding Rocks; and his theory in regard to them was, that this had been a place where the Indians had long ago met to perform their religious rites and ceremonies. Rocks of different sizes--from those not above a foot high, to others that reached almost to my shoulders--all rounded in shape, were here, in the midst of the plain, gathered together within a s.p.a.ce of twenty or thirty feet. They were black--whether from the action of the weather merely, or from some chemical process--and covered on all sides with representations from the animal world of Arizona and Mexico. The pictures had been engraved, in a rude manner, on the black ground, and embraced, in their variety, snakes, lizards, toads; also, four-footed animals, which I could conscientiously recognize neither as horses nor antelopes. Were they horses, it would go to prove that these pictures had been made by roving bands of Indians, any time after the conquest, as it is held that horses were first brought to this country by Cortez.

Did the pictures represent antelopes, it would almost tempt me to believe that it was a specimen of the picture-writing of the Aztecs. The sun was also represented, with its circle of rays, which, in Phil's estimation, was proof conclusive that the heathens had come here only to worship, particularly as there was no water in the neighborhood, and they could not have lived here for any length of time. What the character of the rocks may be, I am not geologist enough to know; but when struck they emit a peculiarly clear and ringing sound, like that produced by striking against a bell or a gla.s.s. None of the tribes now to be found in that part of the country appear to claim any knowledge of the origin of these rocks.

If either the Pimos, Maricopas, or Yumas are descendants of the Aztecs, they have most wofully degenerated. On one point their traditions all agree: namely, that the three tribes were not always at peace with each other, as they are now. Long, long ago, when the Pimos were sorely pressed by the more powerful Yumas, they allied themselves with the Maricopas; and when they still found themselves in the minority against the common enemy, and had been almost exterminated, they flew to the white man for a.s.sistance, and never broke the treaty made with him.

But the shimmer of romance and poetry one would willingly throw around them, is so rudely dispelled by the sight of these lank, dirty, half-nude creatures, with faces exhibiting no more intelligence than (perhaps not so much as) the faces of their lean dogs, or s.h.a.ggy horses.

Yet, again, I must confess that even these Indians are susceptible of a high degree of refinement and cultivation. Two of them, mounted on a horse whose diminutive size allowed their four feet to touch the ground at every stride, dressed, or rather undressed, in a manner to strike terror into the soul of any well brought-up female, rode close up to the ambulance one day, as it pa.s.sed through the Indian villages, one of them shouting, "Bully for you!" at the top of his voice, while the other whipped up the horse at the same time, as though anxious to retreat the moment their stock of polite learning had been exhausted.

Meeting at Maricopa Wells with the captain of the infantry stationed at La Paz, we visited the interior of the Pimo and Maricopa villages together, on horseback. We rode through the field the Indians cultivate, and irrigate from the Gila river, by means of _acequias_ dug through their lands in all directions. Some of their huts on the roadside were deserted by their owners, who had removed to very airy residences, constructed of the branches of cotton-wood and willows, growing on the banks of the Gila, located where they could overlook their possessions on all sides. As these residences consisted simply of a roof, or shed, it was no such very hard matter to keep a lookout on every side. That they do not trust a great deal in each other's honesty, was evident from the way in which they had fastened the doors of their city residences when exchanging them for their country-seats: they had firmly walled up the entrance with _adobe_ mud. However, they are quiet and peaceable, I am told, unless, by any chance or mischance, they get whiskey--of which they are as fond as all other Indians.

In the mountain around which we had pa.s.sed on the last day's journey from Gila Bend, is to be seen, plainly and distinctly, the face of a man, reclining, with his eyes closed as though in sleep. Among the most beautiful of all the legends told here, is that concerning this face. It is Montezuma's face, so the Indians believe (even those in Mexico, who have never seen the image), and he will awaken from his long sleep some day, will gather all the brave and the faithful around him, raise and uplift his down-trodden people, and restore to his kingdom the old power and the old glory--as it was, before the Hidalgos invaded it. So strong is this belief in some parts of Mexico, that people who pa.s.sed through that country years ago, tell me of some localities where fires were kept constantly burning, in antic.i.p.ation of Montezuma's early coming. It looks as though the stern face up there was just a little softened in its expression, by the deep slumber that holds the eyelids over the commanding eye; and all nature seems hushed into death-like stillness.

Day after day, year after year, century after century, slumbers the man up there on the height, and life and vegetation sleep on the arid plains below--a slumber never disturbed--a sleep never broken; for the battle-cry of Yuma, Pimo, and Maricopa that once rang at the foot of the mountain, did not reach Montezuma's ear; and the dying shrieks of the children of those who came far over the seas to rob him of his sceptre and crown, fall unheeded on the rocks and the deserts that guard his sleep.

Two days more, and Phil pointed out to me, at a distance of some two miles away, the ruins of the Casas-Grandes, sole remnant of the Seven Cities the adventurous _Padre_ had so enticingly described to the Spaniards. I could not induce Phil to allow me a nearer view, as we were in the Apache country, and had no escort save the two soldiers in the ambulance with us. From this distance the houses looked to me like any other good-sized, one-story, _adobe_ buildings; but the material must have been better prepared, or differently chosen, from that which is now used in erecting Mexican houses, or it could not have resisted the ravages of Time so far.

On we journeyed, not without some dread on my part, and a great many a.s.surances on the part of Phil that I was a very courageous woman. But nearing Tucson, where the danger was greatest, we were not always alone.

Mexican trains bound for, or coming from Sonora, sometimes fell in with us, and I did not despise their company, for I knew that only "in strength lay safety" for us. Some of these trains consisted of pack-donkeys only, bearing on their bruised backs the linen and cambrics which are so beautifully manufactured in Sonora and other Mexican provinces; others consisted of wagons heavily laden, their drivers armed to the teeth, and well prepared to defend them against attacks the Apaches were sure to make on them, sometime and somewhere between Sonora and Tucson.

One of these trains belonged to Leopoldo Carillo, a Mexican merchant of Tucson, who paid his men one hundred and fifty dollars for every Indian scalp they delivered to him. Phil asked one of the Mexicans, driving a wagon drawn along by some twelve or sixteen horses, if he had taken any scalps on the trip. The Mexican nodded his head in silence, and turned away. The teamster belonging to the next wagon--an American--told us how the Indians had "jumped them," just after crossing the border, and how two of them had held the Mexican, just spoken to, at bay, while two others killed and scalped his younger brother. They all together, some seven or eight of them, had taken three scalps from the Indians on this trip; but he was willing to lose his share of the prize-money, the man said, if the "pesky devils hadn't taken the boy's scalp;" for the brother, he averred, cried and "took on about it" _just like a white man_.

_DOWN AMONG THE DEAD LETTERS._

Strangers visiting Washington, and admiring the style and architecture of the General Post-Office building, would never know that there are numbers of ladies seated behind the plate-gla.s.s of the second-story windows. Indeed, few people residing in the capital are really aware in what part of the building those female clerks are stowed away. I had pa.s.sed on every side of the building--morning, noon, and night--but never had seen anybody that looked like a "female clerk," till I found myself of their number, one morning; and then I discovered the right entrance to the Dead Letter Office. It is on F street, so close to the Ladies' Delivery that any person entering here would be supposed to be inquiring for a letter at that delivery. There is another entrance on E street, but it is not much patronized by the ladies until after fifteen minutes past nine o'clock; for punctually at that time, the door-keeper is instructed to lock the ladies' door on F street, and those who are tardy are compelled to go up the gentlemen's staircase, or pa.s.s in at the large public entrance on E street. Crowds of visitors walk through the building, day after day, but not one of all the ladies employed here do they see, unless they request to be shown the rooms of the female _employes_.

In this department, working hours are from nine o'clock in the morning till three o'clock in the afternoon. Ladies are not allowed to leave the office for lunch, nor do they waste much time in discussing the lunch they may have brought, as it is only in consideration of their industry and close application that they are allowed to leave the office at three o'clock, instead of four.

This Dead Letter Office is one of the most complicated pieces of machinery in the "ship of state." I will try to explain and elucidate as much of it as came under my observation. Letters left "uncalled for" at the different post-offices throughout the country are sent to the Dead Letter Office, after a certain length of time. Letters not prepaid, or short-paid, through neglect or ignorance of the writer, also find their way here; and so do foreign letters, from all parts of Europe, which have been prepaid only in part, and therefore come here, instead of reaching their destination. Sometimes mails are robbed, and the mail-bags hidden or thrown away, but are afterwards searched for, and their remaining contents brought to this office. Then again, a vessel at sea, homeward-bound, brings letters from ships meeting it, of sailors and pa.s.sengers, who send their letters in firm faith that they will reach their anxious friends at home; but if our Government happens to have no treaty or contract with that particular government to which the writer belongs, of course, the letters cannot be forwarded, but are laid at rest here. These letters are carefully preserved for a number of years. They are sometimes called for, and found, a long, long time after they were written; in fact, only "dead" letters are destroyed.

Though I wish to speak more particularly of the duties and labor performed by the ladies employed in this department, I must begin by saying that all letters pa.s.s through the hands of, and are opened by, a number of gentlemen--clerks in the department--whose room is on the ground floor of the building. A great number of letters contain money, valuable papers, and postage stamps. These are sent to the superintendent's room. Letters without contents are folded, with the envelope laid inside the letter, tied in bundles, and sent up-stairs for directing. Money, drafts, and postage-stamps, however, are not the only articles considered "mailable matter" by the public. One day I looked over a box filled with such matter, taken from dead letters and parcels in the opening room, and found in it one half-worn gaiter boot, two hair-nets, a rag doll-baby, minus the head and one foot, a set of cheap jewelry, a small-sized frying-pan, two ambrotypes, one pair of white kid gloves, a nursing-bottle, a tooth-brush, a boot-jack, three yards of lace, a box of Ayer's pills, a bunch of keys, six nutmegs, a toddy-stick, and no end of dress samples. This matter is allowed to acc.u.mulate for three months, and is then sold at auction; but a register is so carefully kept, that the person mailing the doll-baby without prepaying can follow its progress from the little country town where it was mailed to the end of its career under the hammer at the Dead Letter Office, and here can claim the amount it brought at auction.

Every clerk, male or female, has his or her letter, from A to Z, and beginning again with A A, when the alphabet "runs out." Before the ladies take their places at the desk in the morning, the messenger has already placed there the number of envelopes each lady is expected to direct in the course of the day; and large baskets filled with bundles of letters, sent up from the opening room (the bundles marked with the letter of the clerk through whose hands they have pa.s.sed), are brought into the rooms. The envelopes are stamped in one corner with the lady's letter, in red; so that the ladies are spoken of, by the superintendent or the messengers, as Miss A, B, C, D--not as Miss Miller, or Mrs.

Smith. Fifty of these envelopes are contained in one package, so that it is easy to calculate whether any of them are wasted by misdirecting or blotting. The work looks simple enough, when you see a number of ladies seated at their desks, writing addresses on envelopes, with the greatest apparent ease. "And then," as a gushing young lady said to me one day, "how romantic it must be to listen to the outpourings of love and affection that these letters must contain in many cases, and the dark secrets that others disclose." She thought it rather a cruel restraint, when I told her we were allowed to read only so much of a letter as was necessary to discover the name of the writer, and to read no part of it, if the name was signed clearly and distinctly at the end. Let the lady reader pause a moment and ask herself, "Do I sign my letters so that one of these clerks could return them from the Dead Letter Office, without going over the whole of their contents?" By the time you have finished reading this paper, I hope you will have formed the resolution to sign your name "in full," and just as it is, to every letter you send by the mail. Don't sign your name "Saida," when it is really Sarah Jones "in full;" and if you call your father's brick house on Third street, "Pine Grove," because there are two dry pine-trees in the front yard, don't neglect to add "No. 24, Third Street, Cincinnati, Ohio." The greater number of letters pa.s.sing through this office are badly written and uninteresting; many of them so perfectly unintelligible that no human being can read or return them; not that the greater portion of our community are uneducated or unintelligent people, but that they are either reckless or careless. Letters directed with any kind of common sense are most always sure of reaching their destination without visiting the Dead Letter Office. Not only do people, in a number of cases, neglect to prepay their letters, but frequently, letters without direction or address of any kind are dropped into the letter-boxes. In writing to individuals residing in the same city with them, people think it is necessary only to mention the name of the individual; the "post-office man" is expected to know that the letter is not to go out of the city. The post-office people are, if not omniscient, at least very obliging. I have found a letter directed to "Carrolton, in America," and the letter had been forwarded to, and bore the post-mark of every Carrolton in the United States before it was sent here.

The work of the ladies falls under two heads: "Common" and "Special." We will get the best idea of what "Common" means, in contradistinction to "Special," by watching Miss A, on "Common" work this morning. Taking one of the bundles of letters from the basket, she opens it and takes up the top letter; spreading it on the desk, she finds the envelope inside; it is directed to "William Smith, Philadelphia, Penn.," and the words "uncalled for," stamped on the envelope, show why it was sent here. Now, the signature is to be looked for: it is here--"John Jones;" next, where was it dated?--"Somerville, Ohio;" but does the post-mark on the envelope correspond with that? Yes, it is post-marked from where it was dated; so, "John Jones" will receive his letter back again: his friend, "W. Smith," may have left Philadelphia, or may have died. "John Jones'"

letter is returned to him in a coa.r.s.e, brown "P. O. D." envelope, stamped with the letter A in one corner, and he pays three cents for the privilege of knowing that his friend "Smith" never received his letter.

The next is a delicate pink affair, dated, "White Rose Bower"--signed, "Ella;" "only this, and nothing more;" so the letter is hopelessly dead, and thrown into the paper-basket at Miss A's side. The epistle following this is signed, "Henry Foster," and could be returned if it had not been dated at "White Hall" and post-marked "Harrisburg." On looking over the Post-office Directory, we may or may not find a White Hall in Pennsylvania, but there is nothing in the letter to show whether "Henry Foster's" home is in Harrisburg or White Hall; consequently, that letter is dead, too. Here is one, signed plainly and legibly, but the writer has omitted to date it from any particular place. From the tone of the letter, it is plainly to be seen that he lives where the letter was mailed--but where was it mailed? The post-mark on the envelope is so indistinct that any lady not employed in the Dead Letter Office would throw it aside as "unreadable;" but ladies here learn to decipher what to ordinary mortals would be hieroglyphic, or simply a blank. After consulting the pages of the Post-office Directory beside her, Miss A pa.s.ses the envelope to Miss B. "Can you suggest any post-office in Indiana beginning with M, ending with L, with about four letters between?" Miss B scrutinizes the envelope closely. "The post-mark is not from Ind. (Indiana), it is from Ioa" (Iowa), is her decision. Misses C, D, and E, at work in the same room, differ in opinion, and at last Miss A steps across the hall to the room of the lady superintendent, where a "blue-book" is kept, and, with the a.s.sistance of this lady and the book, Miss A discovers the place in Indiana, directs the letter, and continues her work. When she has directed fifty letters, she ties them (with both envelopes--the "P. O. D." and original one--inside each letter) carefully together, and the messenger carries them into the folding-room, where other ladies, employed in this branch, fold and seal them. Of these "Common" letters, every lady is required to direct from two hundred to three hundred a day--a task by no means easy to accomplish.

"Special" work is generally disliked by the ladies, and is of a somewhat "mixed" character. Letters held for postage--consequently not "dead"--come under this head. They, too, are sent back to the writer, if the signature can be found, and the place from which they are dated corresponds with the post-mark; if not, they are a.s.sorted according to letter and put away into "pigeon-holes," marked with the letter corresponding. Foreign letters, such as I spoke of before, come under this head, too. Then there are official letters--in relation to military and judicial matters--short-paid, and, therefore, brought before this tribunal. These require minute attention, as three and four doc.u.ments are inclosed in one envelope sometimes, making it difficult to discover who is the proper person to return them to. Again, there are letters with postage-stamps to be returned, and money letters containing not over one dollar: those with larger amounts are directed in the superintendent's room. Ladies directing stamp and money letters keep account of them in a book, submitted, together with the letters, to the superintendent, at the close of office hours, every day. Money letters are marked with red stars, stamp letters with blue. Stamps taken from dead letters are destroyed by the proper authorities. Then, there is copying to do--orders and circulars, rules and regulations, to be transmitted to the different local post-offices; and translations to be made of communications received from foreign post departments. All this is "Special" work. A large proportion of the letters pa.s.sing through the office are German letters--some French, Italian, Norwegian, and Spanish; but two German clerks are constantly employed, while one clerk can easily attend to the letters of all the other different nationalities together.

Sometimes it comes to pa.s.s that the superintendent visits one room or the other, with a number of letters in his hand; these have been misdirected or badly written. The red letter stamped on each letter guides him to the desk of the lady who has directed it; and very sensitive is each and every lady to the slightest reproach or reprimand received, because of the universal kindness and respect with which they are treated by all the officials with whom they come in contact.

If the task of poring over these epistles of all kinds, day after day, is, on the whole, tiresome and wearing, there are certainly many incidents to relieve the tedium of the occupation. Incidents, I say; letters, I should say. The deep respect we entertain for a well-known army officer was justified to me by the insight his own letters gave me into his character. It is against the rules of the post-office department to read any part of a letter, unless it is necessary to do so in order to discover the correct address of the writer; but, as the general's handwriting is a little hasty and peculiar, and his military honors and t.i.tles were not appended to these letters I speak of, it was natural that they should be read by the clerks, in order to ascertain whether they could be returned to the place they were written from. One of these letters had been written to an old lady (I judged so from the fact of his inquiring about her son and grand-children) somewhere in the South, who, it appeared, had entertained the general at her house, one day during the war, when the general was very much in want of a dinner to eat. He had not forgotten her kindness and hospitality, though it was now after the close of the war; but the old lady had probably removed from the little village to which the letter was directed, or, perhaps, she had died: so the letter came into our hands, and was returned to the general. Another was to an old friend of the general's. They had played together as boys, perhaps, but his friend had not risen to fame and fortune, like himself; he was giving words to his deep sympathy with a misfortune or bereavement that had befallen his friend--sympathy expressed with such tender, true feeling, that we felt as though it were another bereavement that he should have lost this letter of the general's.

The remark was often made among us that the Dead Letter Office afforded the very best opportunities for making collections of autographs of celebrated people--only the authorities could not be made to see it in that light. It was always with a sigh of regret, I must confess, that letters signed by such names as Bancroft, Whittier, Beecher, Grant, Greeley, were returned to their rightful owners. The most interesting accounts of foreign travel were sometimes contained in the dead letters--accounts more interesting than any book ever published. These were, as a general thing, written by ladies--and that sealed their doom.

Gentlemen writing letters almost always sign their full name; but a lady will write a dozen pages, telling her friends all about the Louvre and the Tuileries, the Escurial and London Tower, in one long letter, and then sign Kate, or Lillie, at the end, thus precluding all possibility of having her letter returned, though we know from it that she has returned to her home in Boston. It is almost incredible what a large number of letters pa.s.sing through our hands are "finished off" by that cla.s.sically beautiful verse--"My pen is bad, my ink is pale; my love for you will never fail"--and it is impossible to believe in how many different ways and styles these touching lines can be written and spelled, till you find them dished up to you a dozen times a day, in this office. Eastern people don't appreciate this "pome" as Western farmers do. Missouri rustics are particularly addicted to it. What the predilection of the Southern people might have been, I cannot say; it was just after the close of the war, and their letters were pitiful enough. Of course there was not a Federal postage-stamp to be had in any of the Southern States; and no matter how deeply the contents of some of these letters affected us, we could not forward them to the people they were addressed to. These letters from the South portrayed so terribly true the bitter, abject poverty of all cla.s.ses, at that time, that the Northerners to whom they were written would not have hesitated to a.s.sist these friends of "better days," could they have received the letters; but, even had we been allowed to forward them, the chances were extremely slender that people were still in the same position and location after the war as before the war.

Not these letters alone were sad; for sometimes a whole drama could be read from one or two short letters. One day we found among the dead letters a note written in a feeble, scrawling hand. It was by a boy, a prisoner and sick, in one of the penal inst.i.tutions of New York--sick, poor fellow! and imploring his mother--oh, so piteously!--to come and see him. He was in the sick ward, he said, and if he _had_ been wicked, and had struck at his step-father when he saw him abuse his mother, would she not come to see him, only once, for all that? She must not let his step-father prevent her from coming; he was dreaming of his mother and sister every night, and he knew his mother would come to him; but she must come soon, for the doctor had said so. Perhaps the letter had not reached the mother because the step-father had taken her out of the son's reach; for, in the course of a day or two, we found another letter addressed to the same woman, by one of the prison officials: the boy, Charley, had died on such a date--about a week after his letter had been written--and he had looked and asked for his mother to the last.

About letters written by German people I have noticed one peculiarity: they never omit to write the number of the year in some part of the letter, or on the envelope, outside. Sometimes it is written where the name of the country or the State should be found on the envelope, so that the direction would read, "Jacob Schmied, St. Louis, 1865;" or they write it at the bottom of the letter, instead of signing their name, and then write their name at the beginning of the letter, as though they were writing the letter to themselves. Everything is heavy and clumsy about their letters; they never indulge in joke or sentiment; and through the negligence of one of the German clerks, the most serious trouble had almost been brewed in a German brewer's family, at one time.

It happened in this way:

A substantial German brewer had written to Hans Biersoffel, dunning him for money, owing on several barrels of _lager_. Hans must have left the city--at any rate, the letter came to our office, and was returned to the brewer; but, unfortunately, a very sentimental letter, containing a copy of some love-sick verses, written by a German lady, and held in the office as a curiosity for a little while, had (by mistake, of course) found its way into this letter. The honest Dutchman had meant to return this piece of property to our office at the first opportunity, and therefore carried it in his pocket-book, where his wife discovered it, seized it, and held it over his head, as the sword of Damocles, forever after--as he could not prove to her satisfaction that the letter and verses had _not_ been sent to _him_ by the writer.

At the time I belonged to the corps of dead letter clerks, there were three rooms fronting on Seventh street, fitted up as offices for the lady clerks, and one very large room on the other side of the hall. A straw mat was spread on the stone floor in our room; one office-chair was furnished for each lady, and desks barely large enough for two ladies to work at, without elbowing each other; and in one corner, wash-stand and water. In the large room some twenty ladies were writing, while four or five folders had their desk in the same room. Of the other rooms, one was occupied by the lady superintendent, together with whom were from four to six ladies; the next room also accommodated six ladies, and the last one, which had the look of a prison, from a high grating running through it, afforded room for four others. There were old Post-office Directories, boxes containing printed matter, and such like valuables, kept behind this grating; and one day, when a party of sightseers came unasked into our room, the youngest lady there--whose spirit had not yet been broken by the weight of the responsibilities resting on her shoulders--explained to the gaping crowd that behind this grating were kept the silver and household furniture of General ----,--the a.s.sistant postmaster--boxed up, while he was recruiting in the country. This was a twofold revenge, the young lady said to us: it was punishing the visitors for their inquisitiveness, and "old ----" for having the grating put up there. Several years have pa.s.sed since I last saw the post-office building; the ladies of room No. -- were then pet.i.tioning to have this grating removed. Whether their pet.i.tion was granted, I have not learned.

_MARCHING WITH A COMMAND._

From Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, we were ordered to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, there to join General Sykes' command, then fitting out for the march across the Plains. General Sykes commanded the Fifth Infantry, while my husband belonged to the Third Cavalry; but as the latter regiment was to take up the line of march from Little Rock, Arkansas, through Texas, the lieutenant, as well as some three or four other officers of the Third, were well satisfied to be a.s.signed to the infantry command, and sent in charge of recruits from Washington and Carlisle, to join General Sykes at Fort Leavenworth.