Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1868-05-19
THE POsTORFICE.
Az u was Before the Free De-
livery system and IA
II In Now.
The Departed Glory Of the
Old COrner-How the
Change has Come
About.

~
passage into desuetude and forgetfulness
of old institutions and old customs, is no
better illustrated than by the changes
which, only within the past year or two,
have taken PLACE in the system Of de-
livery and collection Of letters for the
mail. There is probably no reader but
recollects when the Postoiiice was the
one point Of all others in the city visited
by all classes with more regularity and
more frequency than any other, to
which everybody was supposed to
20, or at least to send, once a
day, il no more, where everybody
went to meet everybody. else, and were
pretty sure to find them if they waited
long enough; where the sturdy man OF
trade made his business appointments,
and punctilliously kept them; where
those with no other local habitation in
the commercial world, agreed upon their
meetings, nor aroused the suspicion that
they were not the occupants OF spacious
Office quarters up town where coquettish
misses went to see and be seen by the
handsome young clerks who gracefully
officiated at the ladies delivery; in short,
where the busiest and the idlest, the young
and the old, the sedate and the
gay, made up the conglomerate by whom
everything, from the transfer OF landed
estates to the exchange of sly glance or
meaning wink, was carried on. Then
was the postofice to all classes, trades
and callings what the Chamber of Com
merce is to the merchandise change
on which they met every day, in the first
place to get their mail matter, and in the
second and third and fourth places to
accomplish sundry and divers other OBJ
jects, dictated by within or a sense OF
duty. Then the postofiice corner-and
in those days who ever knew postofiice
elsewhere than on corner ?-was in its
glory.
On every street and thoroughfare con-
verging thereto rents for blocks
around were regulated solely by
a scale of distances from the COM
mon center. A business stand at
the postoAice was little the most de-
sirable stand anywhere, and the occu-
pant thereof never murmured at paying
premium therefor. But alas the glory
of the Postoffice corner has faded, and is
forgotten. The crowds that knew ii
once know it no more. 1t has compare
lively become desolate and deserted
place-the last of all others whereat to
meet the friend for whom you've searched
in vain elsewhere. You inquire for the
banker, the lawyer or the merchant, and
"gone to the postofiice has ceased to be
the reply. The once familiar phrase
is set down as obsolete in the lexicon OF
the present generation. The aqueducts,
too, to the once on,inum gatherum ofthe
Postoffice have ceased to be thronged,
the eager crowds with which, morning,
noon and evening, they were wont to be
animate, have ebbed, never to flow again
The shopkeeper refuses the rent he once
was too eager to pay. Even the old
apple woman at the corner has moved
her barrel-head away, and set up ir
business on some more eligible corner
up town. Nor yet is the change which
has gradually come over the spirit
of the landlords dream, who was the
lucky owner of property within a block
or two of the Postoffice, discoverable
only on the outside of the perforated
wall of letter boxes and delivery win
dows which separate the handsome
postal clerks from the outside world.
It is inside the Office, after all, that the
change has really taken place which has
compelled the new order of things out
side. The system of free delivery as but
recently instituted in all the larger cities,
combined with the lamppost boxes, has
placed every mans postoffice at his own
door. The great central aud solitary
depository has been pulverized, so to
speak, and an hundred postoftces now
take the place of the one. This
system was instituted in Memphis in
March, 1866, under the present
enterprising head of the office, Col
Gist, and, like all good things, has
quietly but steadily grown into favor,
until the old system has almost entirely
fallen into desertude. Of the one hum
dred and odd thousand letters which
passed through the Memphis office last
month, 81 900, or four ffths of all, we're
delivered by the carriers, while the pop
ularity of the street box system has
grown in about the same proportion.
Hence it is that the Office has become
one of the quietest, whereas it was for
merly the busiest point in the city, and
hence the many other changes outside
the Office which have but followed the
new order of things inside.
READ the new advertisement Of b.
Lowenstein & Bres. 66
READERS AHoY l-There is news from
every quarter and the express line made
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