The Sun.
London, England, 1856-10-09 00:00:00

TRE RUSSIAN POST-OFFICE AND TELEGRAPH.

Various persons (gays a correspondent from Moscow)
have shown me letters just delivered to them which had
manifestly been opened before their delivery and alter
their postage. There was one such I saw on Friday,
addressed to an Englishman in the same hotel with me ;
it had been fastened first by the gum of the adhesive
envelope, and secondly by wax. To open the gum or a
wafer, without tearing the paper, nothing but humidity
is necessary, and for wax heat ; but for both together
both moisture and heat are required, and required shntil-
taneously. Steam affords the only adequate process.
The letter in question had evidently been subjected thus
to the action of a powerful jet of hot vapour, all about
the juncture of the envelope. This had been done • with
defiant carelessness, for the whole of the part I. have
mentioned was still damp, distended, creased, and limp
with the process ; while instead of the seal which the
addresses expected, there was a rude blotch of wax,
stamped crosswise with the back of a knife, as it seemed.
In general, the seal is copied before the steam is applied;
the letter is placed, face downwards, on a block of
soft lead, into which the impression is struck by one
smart blow of a broad steel hammer, made for the
purpose. But in the case to which I allude, no such
pains had been taken. All persons, besides, tell me that
nothing can be more wayward than the delivery of letters
and papers sant to them from their countries ; a portion
is all they ever see. But you may say this is only ex-
perience at second hand, what is your own ? Well, on
Friday there came to me a letter from home, calling
itself the eleventh which the same writer had despatched
to me, and it was only the fourth which had received
from that writer. At Moscow, when you prepay a letter,
they give you a receipt for the money you disburse ; at
St. Petersburg, never. It will have some relation to this
subject to mention what occurred to me with respect to
a telegraphic message which I wanted to send, just be- ,
fore leaving Moscow. The telegraph office for foreign and
distant places is in the Kremlin, under the palace ; that
for St. Petersburg is at the railway station. After the
rain-pelted festivities of the 20th at Hadinka, I proceeded
to the Kremlin with a certain message which I wished
to send you. This was on Saturday evening. The clerk,,
after a moment's consulation with another person, told
me that they had upwards of a hundred despatches, and
could not undertake to send my message that day. Could
I return to-morrow ? To-morrow I was going to St.
Petersburg. He advised me to apply at the office there.
On my arrival at St. Petersburg I proceeded with my
message to the telegraph office, in Galernoi. The clerk
read it, carefully counting the words, which, including
the address, were 89 in number. He then read the mes-
sage a second time, looking up here and there at me
with an uneasy and even startled expression. After this
he said quietly, "Thirty-five silver roubles.: "And
when will the message be delivered in London ? asked I,
taking out the money. "Ah! that I cannot say," "Howl
cannot say ? But yet you can take the 35 silver roubles. I
suppose you know for what they are paid ?" He immedi-,
ately began to expatiate on the number of despatches
they had to forward, and said, with a confused look,
that, if I would pay for the message and leave it, he had
no doubt that, in a day or two, it would be expedited.
I begged him to tell me frankly whether there was any-
thing in the message itself which would prevent it being
sent. He answered, "No ; oh no ;" but with such a
guilty look, that I repeated my question more earnestly,
promising that, if I requested them to forward it at all,
I would myself- erase anything that might be disliked.
Upon this lie took the slip of paper into an inner room,
aed when he reappeared he told are the chief would
speak to me. About two minutes elapsed, when this
.
functionary came, holding my message. He was ex-
ceedingly civil. Ho pointed out two passages, and
said is would be better if I erased them. "These
things will be known in the end," he remarked, "but
to ineution thorn now would cloud over a joyous mo-
ment." Now here im my message, word for word as I
wrote it :—" St. Petersburg, September 22..—Deux
cent mill" paysans dinerent ensemble, eamedi, prey
Hadinka, a nouf heures, aux frail do l'Empeseur. A
quatre cent rnillo curieux s'y rassemblerent pour
voir uu festin qu'ile tie savient pas etre dej t fiui; II
totnl.a.it dos torren's de pluie. Deux personnes furent
ecrasees. Lie banquet donne par l'Empereur aux
ambassadeurs cut lieu le 18 au Kremlin. Le 16

l'lmporatri.e-mere it tine legere blestire acciden-
'eelt. Les departs ceininencent." The two passages
which I wag to omit were those where 1 stated that
two persons had been crushed (I fear the recent version
thirty , is the trutl), and where I mentioned the
Empress Mother's " slight accidertal wound," the
mliole;story of which I gave you in a letter from M"'
. If for such passages as these they would suppress
,r mangle a message for which they had pocketed nearly
Six pounds sterling, what fate may not have awaited
long letters ccntrining a great deal too much truth to